AI Austria monthly: June Update

Elevating efforts for the AI ecosystem to the next level with the foundation of the European AI Forum (EAIF) including front line Austrian representation, latest AI news in Austria & beyond ...

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Jun 06, 2023

Summertime has finally arrived. Longer days and pleasant weather create an atmosphere of freedom and possibility. In the midst of this momentum, alliances for ‘AI made in Europe’ are formed, plans for an AI Authority in Austria are unveiled and AI enthusiasts are enjoying a delightful combination of sunshine, AI events, mixers, and meetups. Resist the tantalizing aroma of ice cream and barbecue to dive into our monthly newsletter - it’s worth it!

🚀 Latest Developments

🎉 Joining Forces to form the largest European Industry AI Association:
AI Austria is a Founding Member of the European AI Forum (EAIF)

Nine national AI associations - among them AI Austria - launched the European AI Forum (EAIF) to represent the European AI ecosystem. The EAIF is the first not-for-profit organization acting as a common European voice for more than 2,000 AI companies, thereby becoming the largest representative of the European AI industry.

Accelerating investment in AI, acting on AI strategies and programs, and aligning AI policy to avoid fragmentation in Europe are at the heart of the EAIF’s goals. The EAIF, therefore, intends to promote human-centric regulation, contribute to the design of an innovation-friendly environment, increase AI awareness, showcase the benefits of AI to stakeholders and the public as well as support talent and growth of AI-based solutions made in Europe. “ » more

📢 A big shout out to Michael Katzlberger for creating the logo of the EAIF.

🤝 Our own Jeannette Gorzala becomes Vice President of the EAIF

We are very proud that our Chief Policy Officer Jeannette Gorzala has been appointed Vice President of the EAIF. We have no doubt that you will continue to thrive and make a profound impact in Europe and the European AI ecosystem. Your strategic thinking, vision, and ability to distill the essence of 1,000+ pages of regulations will propel us towards new heights - for the benefit of European AI. Thank you!

📧 We reached a new milestone

It‘s been 6 months since we relaunched our newsletter on Substack. Thank you for your continued interest, engagement, and feedback!

🤖 EU Parliament’s Position on the EU AI Act

On 11 May 2023, the Internal Market Committee and the Civil Liberties Committee adopted a draft negotiating mandate on the AI Act with 84 votes in favor, 7 against, and 12 abstentions. The most recent amendments to the proposal of the AI Act by the European Commission are as follows:

Expansion of the list of prohibited AI practices to include bans on intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI systems such as

"Real-time" remote biometric identification systems in public spaces. 📷🚫
"Post" remote biometric identification systems (exception: law enforcement for prosecution of serious crimes and only after judicial authorization). 🛡️👮‍♀️
Biometric categorization systems using sensitive characteristics (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, political orientation). ⚠️🚫🌍
Predictive policing systems (based on profiling, location, and past criminal behavior). 🕵️‍♀️🌐🔍
Emotion recognition systems in law enforcement, border management, workplace, and educational institutions. 😐🚫🏢🎓
Indiscriminate scraping of biometric data from social media or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases (violating human rights and the right to privacy). 🚷👥❌🔐

Expansion of the classification of high-risk

to include harm to people’s health, safety, fundamental rights, or the environment. 🌱🛡️✅
to include AI systems to influence voters in political campaigns and in recommender systems used by social media platforms (with more than 45 million users under the Digital Services Act).🗳️📣🚫

Introduction of transparency measures for general-purpose AI

Providers of foundation models shall guarantee robust protection of fundamental rights, health and safety, and the environment, democracy, and the rule of law. They shall assess and mitigate risks, comply with design, information, and environmental requirements, and register in the EU database.
Generative foundation models (e.g. GPT), would have to comply with additional transparency requirements, for example disclosing that the content was generated by AI, designing the model to prevent it from generating illegal content, and publishing summaries of copyrighted data used for training.

Supporting innovation and research

Exemptions in the AI Act were included for research activities and AI components provided under open-source licenses. Further, regulatory AI sandboxes or controlled environments established by public authorities to test AI before its deployment are foreseen.

The vote in the European Parliament is expected still in June 2023. After this important step, the Trilogue can start.

🇦🇹🇪🇺 Austrian government is considering to set-up a dedicated AI agency

The European AI Act is approaching. To accelerate its roll-out, State Secretary Florian Tursky (Ministry of Finance) has written an open letter to the EU Commission in Brussels, asking for a European AI regulation to be implemented this year. In addition, Mr Tursky unveiled plans to set up a new AI Authority, which should serve as the central point of contact for all questions surrounding the upcoming regulations and their application.

👀 AI in Austria - an outside view

German weekly ‘Die Zeit’ wrote an article on the discrepancy between Austria’s AI ambitions and the modest funding situation.

🔍 AI in Austria - an inside view

Austrian weekly Der Falter did a deep-dive investigation on the origins of the Austrian AI strategy, and the illustrious persons and companies behind it.

📌 Austrian GenAI Startups featured in Product Hunt

Lalamu Studio has been recognized as a top product by the community and was ranked in the 5th position as the Product of the Day. On top, they received a positive personal comment from the founder of Product Hunt. Additionally, Lalamu Studio was proudly ranked 3rd on Product Hunt in the category of best-rated advertising products in June 2023. The enthusiasm surrounding Lalamu Studio is continuously growing, as it was featured in Bens Bites' newsletter under the category of 'Cool Tools', and received coverage on various international tech and AI websites, including social media coverage on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

⚡️Austrian Association for Electrical Engineering IT Colloquium

On 25 May 2023, top-class speakers from business and research presented current research approaches and diverse areas of application for machine learning and AI at the IT Colloquium of the Austrian Association for Electrical Engineering (OVE). The focus was on possibilities and opportunities but also challenges for industry, SMEs, and the energy sector. The event was moderated by our very own Clemens Wasner and Jeannette Gorzala. more

🦾 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

🚀 New working group: Large Language models and GenAI 🤖

A rising number of companies and startups are applying LLMs and GenAI for professional applications - from text generation to document analysis. We are in the final stages of setting up a dedicated working group for this topic, similar to our very successful RL community. If you want to join the group, already consisting of 10 companies such as Onlim, Ontec, Leftshift One, Deepopinion, and Atos …just get in touch with stefan.engl [at] aiaustria.com

🇩🇪 Join Germany-wide Social Media Campaign: AI Made in Austria

AI Austria is delighted to support the WKO Advantage Austria Munich and Berlin offices in their LinkedIn campaign showcasing Austria's AI achievements in Germany. We invite Austrian AI developers to be featured in this Germany-wide initiative. Send brief descriptions of your innovative solutions, representative statements, engaging visuals, or short videos by June 13, 2023, to Mr. Stefan Niederwimmer at meunchen@advantageaustria.com. Let's make Austrian AI visible!