Acclaimed scientists have come up with a plan to create a massive multinational European institute committed to world-class AI research. This appears to be a desperate attempt to retain and nurture most of the top talent in Europe as far as artificial intelligence is concerned.
It is said that the institute will be created for similar reasons as those behind Cern, a particle physics laboratory located near Geneva. The lab was built after World War II in an attempt to not only recreate European physics but also reverse the brain drain of Europe’s brightest scientists to the United States.
The proposed artificial intelligence (AI) institute dubbed the European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems (Ellis) will have key centers in several nations globally including the UK. Each of these centers will employ hundreds of professionals including mathematicians, computer engineers among other scientists in an effort to keep Europe at the forefront of artificial research (AI).
In an open letter, the scientists involved in the project urged governments to act. They described how Europe has failed to keep up with China and the US, where most of the leading AI universities and firms are located. The letter added that despite the existence of several research hotspots in Europe, almost all the top talent in those places was being continuously recruited by leading US-based tech companies.
The magnitude of the recruitment frenzy and the destructive impact it continues to have on British universities was highlighted in a Guardian investigation that was conducted last year. The research revealed that Ph.D. students had abandoned their studies to take up six-figure salaries in US tech companies. What’s more, some of the universities have lost their entire generation of young talented researchers.
The open letter signed by scientists from various countries including Netherlands, Israel, UK, Germany, France, and Switzerland calls for the creation of the new institute this year. According to the proposal, participating nations will finance the institute as an intergovernmental organization. A similar approach is utilized in the funding of the European Molecular Biology Lab, which has its leading center in Cambridge.
Zoubin Ghahramani, a chief scientist at Uber and professor of information engineering at Cambridge University, emphasized the need to act on the project as soon as possible. He added that the new institute would deliver centers of mass to Europe that would have hundreds of researchers with expertise from different nations.
Ghahramani, one of the leading influential AI researchers in Britain joined San-Francisco-based Uber after it acquired Geometric Intelligence, an AI startup that he co-created with his psychologist partner several years back. Aside from all these, Ghahramani is known for spearheading the UK ’s involvement in the proposal to create the new laboratory.
The proposed institute’s stated mission entails making sure that the best AI research is undertaken in Europe, an objective that would push economies and jobs as well as give scientists in Europe some influence in shaping AI transformations in the world.
The initial steps in creating the institute are anticipated to start with a partnership between Germany and France while other countries will join later. Eventually, every local laboratory would grow into a $100 million facility with an annual operating budget of $30 million.
Source Guardian
