TAILOR has 54 partners from 20 European countries. In addition, around 100 other labs have chosen to be part of the network. Together we assemble 150 leading European research labs and aim to give rise to a culture of sustained collaborations and transformative innovations. The network enables faster research progress by providing a common resource for Europe and the world with easy access to state-of-the-art knowledge and expertise in the foundations of Trustworthy AI.
At the project start, in September 2020, and through the first 18 months, the covid pandemic prevented people from travelling. Networking has relied on digital tools; no physical project meetings were arranged during the period. Despite this, partners have succeeded in collaborating, both on reports, on scientific articles, and on network events. The project had produced >100 scientific articles at M18, of which > 50 were A-level and >14 included two or more partners. TAILOR (co-)organised at least 5 conferences as well as numerous workshops.
Network collaboration is at the heart of TAILOR, and efforts are made to promote and support interaction and collaboration between network members and project partners through tools, development of training material, organisation of training events, PhD and staff exchanges, etc. The overall goals are to foster excellence through shared knowledge and vision, to create a sustainable research capacity in Trustworthy AI which has critical mass and can effectively interact with European funding mechanisms, and to establish a healthy pipeline of future talent. A Connectivity Fund is available to all partners and network members, for funding of collaborative projects and extended research visits. The fund is expected to be even more attractive in the next period, provided that the pandemic does not resurge.
The TAILOR network includes many of Europe’s top AI labs, and we want to reach out to the many other excellent labs and organisations across Europe to work together and create new breakthroughs in AI.
We especially aim to support young researchers to gain valuable experience and nurture the next generation of AI researchers.
Three Theme Development Workshops (TDW) were co-arranged with HumanE AI Net, VISION and CLAIRE. All were set up to bring together key players from specific industry sectors with key AI researchers, as well as other stakeholders. The objectives are to jointly identify strategic AI research areas and challenges, and to initiate further activities to address them. The first TDW was on “AI in the Public Sector”, the second on “Future mobility”, and the third on “AI for Future Healthcare”. All were successful, providing platforms for such discussions that are key in unlocking the full potential of AI in Europe.
The TAILOR Strategic Research and Innovation Roadmap (SRIR) aims to boost research on Trustworthy AI by defining major research challenges. It is focused on the integration of learning, optimization, and reasoning to improve the trustworthiness of AI systems. Academic contributions were fetched from the scientific Work Packages. Applied research directions also came out of the TDWs.
The four ICT-48 networks (AI4Media, ELISE, HumanE-AI NET, TAILOR) and the VISION consortium have founded a joint instrument to support a world-class AI PhD level education programme; the international AI Doctoral Academy (AIDA). AIDA offers access to knowledge and expertise and supports attracting PhD talents in Europe.
