AI Austria monthly: JulAI Update

Reviewing the challenges and achievements in the first half year of 2023, beginning of the trilogue negotiations on the AI Act, events, events, events ...

As June gently transitions into July, a distinct sense of anticipation and contentment begins to permeate the air. It's a time when weary souls find solace and relief, and a collective sigh of satisfaction fills the atmosphere. The first half of the year has been a journey filled with excitement about generative AI, challenges in regulation and victories manifested in the final starting of the trilogue on the AI Act. Now, it's time for a well-deserved respite - of course only after you have read our news update ;-)

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🚀 Latest Developments

⭐ AI Austria Position Paper on the EU Parliament’s AI Act Position

On 14 June 2023, the European Parliament adopted its position on the Artificial Intelligence (AI Act) and trilogues swiftly started on the same day, after the announcement press conference. While we welcome that (finally) the last phase of the legislative porcess for the AI Act has begun, we see two critical which need to be adapted in order to make the AI Act the landmark legislation, it needs to be:

• the AI definition, that is currently too broad and does not focus on key characteristics of AI, hence applies to any advanced software.

• the idea to apply the same set of rules to commercial and open-source foundation models, since by nature these concepts and structures are inherently different and cannot be governed and treated the same.

We have summarized our concerns and position in more detail in our position paper and remain committed to supporting the legislative process and advocating for resolving in particular the above mentioned points for a beneficial and responsible AI regulation in Europe - as AI Austria - and as member of the European AI Forum. ▶️ Find our full position paper here◀️

👉 Reception of the problems for open-source software and the status of AI use for boarder control and migration in derStandard.at.

🤖 ASAI Press Conference - State of AI in Austria: Triumph or Tragedy?

Austria’s AI research elite presented their State of AI in Austria Report at the high level press conference hosted by our friends and colleagues ASAI (Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence). The panel discussion featured Austria’s crème de la crème of AI research and academia:

• Sepp Hochreiter (JKU, Institute for Machine Learning)

• Thomas Eiter (TU Wien, Institute of Logic and Computation)

• Agata Ciabattoni (TU Wien,  Institute of Logic and Computation)

• Martina Seidl (JKU, Institute for Symbolic Artificial Intelligence)

• Robert Legenstein (TU Graz, Institute of Theoretical Computer Science)

• Christoph Lampert (ISTA, Machine Learning and Computer Vision)

• Gerhard Friedrich (AAU, Institute for Artificial Intelligence und Cybersecurity)

• Axel Polleres (WU Wien, Institute of Data, Process and Knowledge Management)

• Günter Klambauer (JKU, Institute for Machine Learning)

• Bernhard Nessler (JKU, Institute for Machine Learning)

Triumph or tradgedy? - Austria has the best prerequisites to become an international leader in the field of AI. We have amazing talent, internationally recognized research and academic leaders, a geographical advantage due to our location in the heart of Europe and top quality of life. However, to build on this foundation 1) financing for adequate infrastructure and compute capacity and 2) measures to retain PhD students and academics are urgently needed. 👉 Find out more and re-watch the discussion 🎞 full video, deep dive into the 📕 ASAI State of AI in Austria Report , get the full picture in the 📍position paper, and follow up on the 📰 press coverage in der Standard.at.

🇦🇹 Guest Commentary: Strong Regulation of Artificial Intelligence thus promoting innovation and economic growth by Florian Tursky, Austrian State Secretary for Digitalization

The Austrian government, represented by State Secretary Florian Tursky, has recently proposed a number of measures to accelerate the implementation of the AI act and create momentum for AI made in Europe. In his guest commentary Mr. Tusky lays out his vision on how smart AI regulation can become a boost for the economy

👉 Read the full commentary on our website

👻 Industry Talk “Who is afraid of the AI Ghost” by the Section Advertising and Market Communication of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce

Since last year in Summer, generative AI tools are flooding the markets and amaze private and commercial users with their capabilities day by day. In this positive emerging and at the same time slightly intimidating new aera of creativity, the Advertising and Market Communication Section of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce asked to the point: “Who is afraid of the ‘AI Ghost?’

In the splendid setting of Kurier Media Lounge Sigrid Neureiter-Lackner and deep dived into the practical use cases in art, marketing and press with Jürgen Bauer (Chairman, Section Advertising and Market Communication, Vienna Chamber of Commerce), Andreas Mauczka (Chief Digital Officer APA Group), Martin Gaiger (CEO KURIER Digital), Siegfried Stepke (CEO e-dialog), Stephanie Meisl (CIAO Full Future Consulting GmbH), Stefanie Ruckhofer (CEO Marketing.Digital).

Jeannette Gorzala represented AI Austria and the European AI Forum to shed some lights on the current status of draft regulations for foundation models, generative AI and to give a few tips to navigate the current tricky situation in between. 👉Find out more in the 🎥 key messages of the industry talk, 🎞 the full video (© leadersnet/Stowasser) and a 📑 short summary (© WKW).

🚀 Why AI startups have (sometimes) a hard time in Austria

Futurezone interviewed two of our board members on their experience in building AI companies in Austria. While public support via grants is excellent, often its easier to acquire international customers than dealing with local corporates. » more

⚡Energy & ChatGPT - HAKOM Webinar Value for Time Series Developers

Topic of the last HAKOM Webinar was how to create custom code to convert, validate, and ingest time series data in one step with the help of ChatGPT by using HAKOM Time Series Technology . Our Jeannette Gorzala was invited as a guest speaker to shed some light on legal aspects, alongside the experts Thomas Hasleder (CTO & Co-founder | HAKOM), Maximilian Absenger (Project Manager | HAKOM) and Stefan Komornyik (CEO & Co-founder | HAKOM). 👉 Re-watch the Webinar.

🔥 Generative AI News

👉 The parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, has recently introduced a music production app called Ripple in the United States. This innovative app is specifically designed to assist creators in composing and editing music for their content, with a special focus on short-form videos found on TikTok and other platforms.

👉 According to CEO Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, the AI research lab, is currently in the process of creating a cutting-edge chatbot named Gemini, which has the potential to challenge or even surpass OpenAI's ChatGPT. Hassabis revealed to Wired that Gemini, utilizing the advancements made by DeepMind's AlphaGo AI system, possesses the ability to analyze text, strategize, and tackle complex problem-solving tasks.

👉 Runway, renowned for its AI software that transforms text prompts into short videos, has secured an impressive $141 million in a Series C extension round. Notable investors such as Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures have contributed to this funding. Runway's Gen-2 tool, widely acclaimed for its ability to generate videos based on text inputs, has gained significant traction across various user segments, ranging from film directors to individual content creators.

☀️ TU Summer School

This week, from 3.7.2023 to 7.7.2023, the Technical University Vienna (TU Wien) is hosting their summer school program. Check out their fully-packed program featuring many experts in the field of AI as well as a panel tomorrow, 4 July 2023, 6pm CET, featuring our colleagues Gabriele Bolek-Fügl, Jana Kemnitz and Diana Silvestru from Women in AI Austria (WAI), moderated by Carina Zehetmaier under👉 TU Summer School.

🦾 2.Call for Action

🏢 AI Austria booth at the Digital Days 2023 "Digital Humanism - in action"

The Digital Days is a joint event of the City of Vienna and DigitalCity.Wien and the digital economy, in cooperation with the Vienna Business Agency and the Vienna Science, Research, and Technology Fund (WWTF).

This year’s event will take place on November 20 & 21 at the Technical Museum Vienna. Our long-term cooperation partner Urban Innovation Vienna offered us to host an AI Austria joint booth to showcase 3-6 AI Applications, catering to both a professional crowd as well as students and the general public.

If you are interested in joining us send us your concept idea to office@aiaustria.com

📆 Upcoming Events

5.7. European AI Forum Conference
12.7. aws KI-Marktplatz - Virtual AI breakfast “Generative AI for businesses”
18.7. aws KI-Marktplatz - Virtual AI breakfast “AI in production”
1.8. Risks & opportunities in AI - Fireside chat with Stanford Univ. Dr. Anthony Corso
6.9. Ars Electronica Festival 2023

For more information on upcoming events head over to our community calendar.

🧑‍💻 Featured Jobs

Once a month we feature selected openings from our job board in this section.

• Digital Product Designer (part-time) and Full Stack Engineer👩‍💻👨‍💻 at IKNAIO

• Software developer at Arteria Technologies

• Product Manager AI Geospatial Data Platform at enliteAI

• LIT AI Lab and Institute for Machine Learning: 2 PostDoc positions and 4 Ph.D. positions in “Machine Learning” and “Machine Learning for Life Sciences”

Want your job listed? Head over to our Job Board.

🎧 Want to listen to this update instead of reading? Click “Play” below: