Data and information technologies have become of vital importance in the 21 st Century society. Not only are our industries based on infrastructures powered by these technologies, also in our private life we have become addicted users. In addition to recent advancements in high performance computing, storage, internet of things and big data, we are confronted with a series of breakthrough developments in Artificial Intelligence. AI is bringing us novel learning methodologies, allowing machines to do almost perfect speech and object recognition or learn chess from scratch in one day and become a world next day. Artificial intelligence is also enabling breakthrough transformations in science. AI promises to deeply affect society, from self-driving cars to systems supporting human decision making in medicine, government, or e-commerce. Artificial intelligence has the potential to bring unprecedented benefits to humanity, but at the same time poses a number of significant challenges, both short-term as well as long-term, that need to be addressed to ensure that AI-based solutions are both beneficial for society, reliable and in line with the ethical norms.

The European Commission announced last April 25th the launching of a European Initiative on AI identifying the three different levels that need to be addressed: 1) Boost the EU´s technological and industrial capacity and AI uptake across the economy; 2) Prepare for socio-economic changes and; 3) Ensure an appropriate ethical and legal framework.

Session objectives:

This session aims at exploring through concrete examples opportunities and challenges of applying Data-driven AI solutions in sectors of high economic and societal value for Europe. In particular this session will cover the sectors of Healthcare, Bio Economy, Transport, Logistics and mobility, and, Manufacturing. Through the examples we will identify value created as well as specific sectorial challenges for the success of this technology, and will ask the experts to define a vision for AI in each of the sectors. Non-technical challenges such as privacy, legislation, ethics will also be covered as potential barriers for wider adoption and speed in adopting AI applications. Additionally this session will look at the cross-sectorial challenges identifying some of the most important (technical) challenges, which could be potentially addressed in the upcoming research programme.

The session is organized by the Big Data Value Association (www.bdva.eu) in collaboration with the BDV PPP lighthouse projects and several key stakeholders in both Big Data and Robotics.