{"id":851,"date":"2023-06-20T10:17:55","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T02:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/?p=851"},"modified":"2024-07-12T11:57:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T03:57:43","slug":"scientists-plan-huge-european-ai-hub-to-compete-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/scientists-plan-huge-european-ai-hub-to-compete-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Plan Huge European AI Hub to Compete with US"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Exclusive: In an open letter, the scientists say the proposed Ellis institute is essential to avoid brain drain to big tech firms<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scientists inspecting AI work at the Data Science Institute at Imperial College London.
Photograph: David Levene<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Leading scientists have drawn up plans for a vast multinational European institute devoted to world-class artificial intelligence (AI) research in a desperate bid to nurture and retain top talent in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new institute would be set up for similar reasons as\u00a0Cern, the particle physics lab near Geneva, which was created after the second world war to rebuild European physics and reverse the brain drain of the brightest and best scientists to the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Named the European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems, or Ellis, the proposed AI institute would have major centers in a handful of countries, the UK included, with each employing hundreds of computer engineers, mathematicians and other scientists with the express aim of keeping Europe at the forefront of AI research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an open letter that urges governments to act, the scientists describe how Europe has not kept up with the US and China, where the vast majority of leading AI firms and universities are based. The letter adds that while a few \u201cresearch hotspots\u201d still exist in Europe, \u201cvirtually all of the top people in those places are continuously being pursued for recruitment by US companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extent of the hiring frenzy and the\u00a0damaging impact it is having on British universities\u00a0was revealed in a Guardian investigation last year. It found that PhD students had left their studies for\u00a0six-figure salaries\u00a0at US tech firms. Meanwhile, some universities had been hit so hard that they\u00a0had lost the entire generation\u00a0of talented young researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter, signed by scientists in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Israel and the Netherlands, calls for work on the new institute to start this year. Under the proposal, participating countries would fund the institute as an intergovernmental organization. The same approach is used to fund the European Molecular Biology Lab, which has a major center in Cambridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is AI?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomething needs to be done and it needs to be done now,\u201d said Zoubin Ghahramani, professor of information engineering at Cambridge University and chief scientist at Uber. \u201cIt would provide Europe with centers of mass where we would have not 10 researchers but hundreds with expertise from different countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ghahramani, one of the most influential AI researchers in Britain, joined Uber after the San Francisco-based firm bought Geometric intelligence, an AI startup he co-founded with a New York University psychologist some years ago. Despite the move, which exemplifies the problems Europe now faces, he has driven the UK\u2019s involvement in the proposal for the new lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is of such importance to Europe it would be a terrible mistake not to do something major,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t act in this area, both European universities and European industry will start to drift downwards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The institute\u2019s stated mission is to ensure that the best AI research is performed in Europe, a goal that would drive jobs and economies and also give the region\u2019s scientists a voice in shaping how AI changes the world, the scientists believe. Those who work at the institute would have the freedom to work with industry and launch startup companies based on the breakthroughs they make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Private and public investment in AI have soared on the back of breakthroughs in the field over the past few decades, but the US and China have firmly taken the lead. The technology has such potential that its impact on society is widely expected to be as profound as the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first steps in building the institute are expected to begin with a collaboration between France and Germany with other nations joining later. Ultimately, each local lab would become a $100m facility with an annual budget of $30m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The potential for AI to have a dramatic impact on lives, by taking decisions in areas from healthcare and policing to defense and transport, has led to serious questions over who writes the rules on how AI is used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Europe steps back and watches AI research from the sidelines, it will have little say in shaping its future, Ghahramani said. \u201cThe regulatory environment for technology is often led by the people who control the technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major supporter of the institute, Bernard Scholkopf, director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tubingen, Germany, said: \u201cEurope has a unique academic research tradition, so we have managed to keep up for a number of years. But the US and China have recognized the strategic importance of this field and no single European country is a match for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credit: Ian Sample<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References: The Guardian<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonus Tip: <\/strong>Learn to architect and implement Microsoft AI solutions involving natural language processing, speech, computer vision, bots, and agents with our upcoming Azure AI Engineer Associate certification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: In an open letter, the scientists say the proposed Ellis institute is essential to avoid brain drain to big tech firms Leading scientists have drawn up plans for a vast multinational European institute devoted to world-class artificial intelligence (AI) research in a desperate bid to nurture and retain top talent in Europe. The new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2378,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions\/2378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.info-trek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}