CRYSTAL  - Conversational Systems for Emotional Support and Customer Assistance  [November 1, 2024 - October 31,  2028 | MSCA Staff Exchange]

CRYSTAL will advance research for a next generation of conversational models and systems that implement reliable, friendly and efficient human-machine interactions that can assist humans in tasks beyond automatic information provision, such as emotional support as well as customer assistance. Emotional support provided to vulnerable individuals, such as ageing adults or people experiencing anxiety or depression. Advanced customer assistance provided to call centres, providing customer care and response to customer inquiries, in an empathic, inviting, accurate and efficient manner. Conversational models and systems will be developed by proposing novel learning strategies for domain adaptation, exploring Large Language Models (LLMs) and prompt engineering methodologies. User state estimation will be also considered, and strategies, such as behavioural models and stakeholder goals, will guide the policies for dialogue management. Novel evaluation frameworks will be also designed by including automatic metrics, usability as well as human acceptance of the technology. Strict ethical and AI robustness compliance procedures will be applied, as conversational recordings will be collected, anonymised, annotated and encrypted for collaborative work among the project partners. The project will apply extensive staff secondments and foster sustainable knowledge exchange. It will grow the experiences and insights of the partner organisations’ staff via intersectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations, implemented through secondments as well as training and networking activities. Dissemination, communication and exploitation activities will expand the project’s impact pathways.  Project Website

 AI4VET4AI - AI-powered Next Generation of VET [June 15, 2023 - June 14,  2027 | Erasmus+]

Science is clear: Artificial Intelligence will be the defining development of the 21st century. Experts estimate that due to the rise of AI within only 2 decades aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. The influence of AI is about to challenge the very organizing principles of our economic and social order. It can generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education, but it can bring existential perils for life as we know it. This makes the EC2020 report that the EU is lagging behind USA and Asia in AI-adoption and development all the more worrying. Among many reasons behind that, the lack of skilled work force is definitively one of the more prominent ones. The objective of AI4VET4AI is to contribute to the digital transformation of the EU labor market by adding new innovative teaching content and methods to VET curricula across 11 European countries and 18 EU NUTS2 regions, in order to support the growth of AI-skilled workers. We start from the ground up: we investigate the most potent sectors for AI-deployment in our 17 regions, and for those sectors, in close cooperation with enterprises and their cluster organizations we create 14 MOOCs and TT materials that can easily be implemented in VET programs (IVET and CVET). We organize 11 innovative AI VET campuses and 7 VET innovation AI incubators, in which VET learners hone their creative and entrepreneurial skills. We use project activities to connect partners closely and to raise awareness of the AI potential in our regions among representatives of public and private sector, as well as civil society. In turn, this helps us to create a joint and active platform of concerned EU citizens and institutions, interested, informed and motivated in supporting AI development further -- this being the basis of our ambitious CoVE - Center of Vocational Excellence, which aims to attract many more institutions (HEIs, VETs, companies, agencies, individuals) in its pursuit of sustainable, inclusive and just AI-powered future for all.  Project Website