On November 16th, 2022, ICAI organizes the ‘ICAI Day: AI & Climate Change’ This hybrid event will take place on location in Utrecht and online. Registration is now open for anyone interested.

During the first part, the Lunch Table Discussion (on-site only), from 12:00 to 13:30 hrs, you will have the opportunity to talk to others in small table settings during a catered lunch. Each table revolves around a specific topic with regard to Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change. You can choose from seven sectors: Heavy Industry and Manufacturing, Electricity Systems, Transportation/Mobility, Agriculture, Societal Adaption, Ecosystems and Biodiversity, and Markets and Finance. The seats are limited for this part, so sign up quickly.

The second part of the ICAI Day, the Plenary Session from 13:30 to 18:00 hrs, will be a hybrid setting moderated by Felienne Hermans (Leiden University). You can sign up for this plenary program physically or online. Keynote speakers Chiem van Straaten (KNMI), Elena Verdolini (EIEE, Università degli Studi di Brescia) & Ralf Herbrich (Hasso Plattner Institute) will share their insights on how Artificial Intelligence can be used to tackle Climate Change. Thereafter, there will be a panel discussion and some drinks to close the event.

On Tuesday 20 September the AI and Ethics course was launched at Startup Village in the Science Park of the University of Amsterdam. The course is a follow-up to the original Dutch National AI Course that focused on the basic building blocks of artificial intelligence. 

Jim Stolze explained during the official launch. “There were a lot of lingering questions among the participants of our first course, questions such as: ‘How do we keep it fair and how do we avoid prejudice entrenching itself in algorithms?’ To make sure that everyone understands how the sector grapples with these topics and thinks these things through for themselves, there is now the National AI Course: AI and Ethics.”

After the opening words, there was a group discussion with, among others, professor Maarten de Rijke, founder of ICAI, and distinguished professor of artificial intelligence and information retrieval at the University of Amsterdam. Maarten recounted how trustworthiness is one of the most important pillars on which a broader rollout of AI technology could rest. People will only trust AI if it proves itself worthy of that trust. This means that AI should be explainable, transparent, have reproducible results, and should be trustworthy for less prominent groups.

The way that he and his colleagues approach this issue is to try and push the gas, but make sure there are guardrails. Explicability, transparency, trustworthiness for less prominent groups, and reproducibility could be some of these guardrails.

After the talk it was finally time for the official launch, Sennay Ghebreab the director of the Civic AI Lab at ICAI, Mieke van Heesewijk from the SIDN fund, and Quirine Eijkman from the Netherlands’ Institute for Human Rights had the honor to press the big red button and give the world access to the course. These three domain experts are featured in the course due to their long-standing work on human rights, AI, and ethics.

The conversation on AI and Ethics continued with some food and drinks. All attendees brought some of their experience and expertise for lively discussion and a group picture.

The course is free and accessible for everyone: https://ethiek.ai-cursus.nl

The first ICAI national social meetup on June 30th was a lot of fun. Our community members, from scientific directors, support staff, project managers, lab managers to PhD students, all had a great time meeting people face-to-face after the two-year pandemic.

There were two locations: Amsterdam and Nijmegen. Each location had its own program and highlights. In addition to tasty food and drinks at the Amsterdam site, there was a ping-pong table where people could stretch their legs during the meetup. Community members from Wageningen and Amsterdam labs had come to the Nijmegen site to chat and chill together. We got lucky with the weather too; the rain only came after the meetup.

Thank you all for making such a great social gathering possible! We will see you again in early 2023 for the next national social meetup.

On June 1^st, 2022, the ICAI Day ‘AI Entrepreneurship: From the lab to the market’ took place at Startup Village Amsterdam. During this edition, Dutch AI Startup experts and professionals discussed the different phases of a startup’s life cycle. Difficulties, challenges, and possible solutions were shared.

The ICAI Day started with inspiring lunch table sessions where new ideas were developed, new connections were made, and feedback was given. Afterwards during the plenary part, the speakers inspired the participants on the different elements of an AI Startup journey. From the topic how to start with an idea towards how to raise VC money. During the presentations multiple questions were discussed and answered like ‘What is more challenging: Fundraising or delivering a product/ service that fits in the market?’, and ‘Where do you find the help you need, to kick off with your start-up?’.

Thanks to all the moderators, speakers, and panel members who contributed to this event:
Anita Lieverdink, Arjan Goudsblom, Bram van Ginneken,  Chris Slootweg, Giulia Donker, Hennie Huijgens, Hinda Haned, Jakub Zavrel, Judith Dijk, Maarten Stolk, Thijs Dijkman, Tristan Van Doorn, and Vladimir Nedović.

We thank all participants for their presence and contribution. We hope to see you at the next ICAI Day on November 16th, 2022!

The ICAI Day summer edition 2022 was sponsored by Startup Amsterdam.

Partners were Thematic Technology Transfer Artificial Intelligence (TTT-AI) and Startup Village Amsterdam. 

For more ICAI Day videos, please click here.

The National AI course will be continued! More than 300,000 people have been reached since its launch in 2018. This course explains the basics of artificial intelligence in an understandable way. A special course on AI and Ethics will be launched after this summer.

This new course focuses on topics such as algorithmic bias, combating disinformation, the power of tech companies and the importance of human rights in the digital world.

With experts from many walks of life the course wants to raise awareness around the pitfalls of digitization and stimulate the debate on human-centered AI. Experts include Sennay Ghebreab (ICAI), José van Dijck (Utrecht University), Mieke van Heesewijk (SIDN Fund), Merel Koning (Amnesty International), Quirine Eijkman (College for Human Rights) and Sander Duivestein (author of Echt Nep).

Upon completion of this free online program, the student will receive a certificate.

After summer, the course can be found at https://ethiek.ai-cursus.nl.

On July 5th, 2022, The Thematic Technology Transfer – Artificial Intelligence (TTT-AI) will organize a two-hour workshop on setting up an AI startup.

TTT-AI offers a specialized venture-building program and investment fund for knowledge/research-based AI startups. During this two-hour workshop at the University of Amsterdam, you’ll get a clear understanding of the different aspects an AI startup will go through. Topics include technology development, product-market fits, team formation, customer relations, IP protection, the startup lifecycle, funding, and many more. During the workshop, the presenters will not only teach you some important tools, but will also use and experiment with them. To end the workshop, TTT-AI invited two successful startups to share their best practices and answer some of your questions.

Please send an email to Giulia Donker (g.donker@uva.nl) if you want to come to the workshop.

On June 1st, 2022, ICAI organizes the ‘ICAI Day: AI Entrepreneurship – From the lab to the market.’ This hybrid event will take place on location in Amsterdam and online. Registration is now open for everybody interested.

During the first part, the Lunch Table Discussion, from 12:00 to 13:30 hrs, you will have the opportunity to talk to others in small table settings during a catered lunch. Each table revolves around one sector on “The life cycle of a Startup.” You can choose from five sectors: healthcare, service industry, robotics, public domain, and transportation/mobility. There is a maximum amount of seats available for this part, so sign up quickly.

The second of the ICAI Day, the Plenary Session from 13:30 to 17:30 hrs, will be a hybrid event moderated by Desiree Hoving. You can sign up for this plenary program both physically and online. Keynote speakers Chris Slootweg (UvA) and Hinda Haned (Civic AI lab, UvA) will share their insights on going from lab to market. There will be talks by TTT-AI, Venture Capital, and TechLeap.nl. We will end the event with a panel discussion and closing drinks.

Find the program here and register here.