Mission statement
TAIGA's Socially Aware Artificial Intelligence (SAI) focus area is dedicated to develop pre-existing potentials for research, education, and social impact niches on which UMU can be an international leader on (e.g. networks, expertise, technical solutions, streamlined applications).
This focus area focuses on the umbrella concept of SAI, i.e. systems that can account for and adapt their decisions according to the (psycho)social context they are situated in. This framing was strategically selected for optimizing the possibility for niche creation by: 1) building up on a unified core of interdisciplinary expertise and methods close to pre-existing UMU capacity, from computing sciences to SSH and applicative fields 2) encompassing a wide array of technological phenotypes, such as modelling the interaction context of the system and mental states of people interacting with it and of human-like virtual agents in for simulating social implications of a policy; 3) opening for a wide array of applications across other disciplines (e.g. education, psychology, critical theories, equal opportunities); and 4) providing operational cases for external scrutiny by SSH research (e.g. ethical, legal, social, cultural, political implications of a given technique).
Relatively to TAIGA, this focus area profiles itself by building on a broad technological foundation, which acts as a beacon for attracting AI method developers and possible users or observers of such methods and, incidentally, creating straightforward mutually beneficial arenas for collaboration through application-service relationships. SAI’s activities are streamlined towards this end (e.g. gathering large databases of local experts, organizing specialized workshops for eliciting AI-methodological and applicative needs and potentials, hackathons, research-education alignments producing proofs of concepts through MSc theses, contact broking and project-writing). The growing successes of these past activities now provide us with sufficient resources for stepping up the SAI activity, from situation awareness and strategic building and one-to-one matchmaking, to the leading the development of sustainable university-wide research platforms crystallizing federated interests into world-leading, technological and applicative niches sourced in UMU’s unique potentials.
Key activities
The regular organization of transdisciplinary networking events (seminars, workshops), both internally, nationally, and internationally
The development of a university-wide integrative SAI research platform, including technical infrastructures as well as the competences; for allowing the effective integration of AI methods in research and development of competence for scrutinizing the impact of AI on society
Stimulating operating collaborations and project-writing activities through dedicated initiator grants and project support resources
Structuring internal and external networks working on or related to transdisciplinary AI research
More details of how the SAI focus area operates are available here:
Vanhée, L. (2023). Organizing Transdisciplinary Research and Innovation: the Case of the Socially-Aware Artificial Intelligence Focus Area. In MULTITTRUST@ HAI (pp. 10-18).
If you think your activity (research, education, social impact, business) could contribute to or benefit from the social AI focus area mission, please contact us.