AI Finland AI Day and ETAIROS event 2021 featured a staggering number of speakers and themes in three different tracks. The full program is listed here.
Due to the simultaneous nature of the three program tracks, this report only covers the program of AI Finland. Below, you will find further links to some of the presentations, topics, and publications related to them.
The Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs Mika Lintilä characterised Finland as a forerunner in AI development. The Finnish strategy aims at sustainable digitalisation, with a special focus on SME companies. Finland supports the EU initiatives on transparent and responsible AI.
The City of Espoo was represented by four speakers, including Mayor Jukka Mäkelä and Director of Economic Development Harri Paananen. Their speeches were followed by report by Teemu Haapalehto and Peter Ylén on the city’s integration policy, which involves the ethical use of sensitive data coming from multiple sources.
Aleksi Kopponen, Special Advisor, Ministry of Finance, then introduced Aurora AI by explaining what it can do to help reboot the provision of public services. The National Artificial Intelligence Programme AuroraAI aims at distinguishing individual people’s life situations and personalising the AI needs accordingly. What human-centricity means in AuroraAI is that people should be treated as humans, not customers of several different services that work independently of each other.
Marina Bill, the President of recently founded ADRA (AI, Data and Robotics Association) presented the current robot density in the world (image above). Finland is situated in the Nordic average level when it comes to the use level of robotics. The aim of ADRA is to build a coherent infrastructure and an effective innovation ecosystem to stimulate the deployment, adoption and future research that is essential to advancing the expertise in European AI, Data and Robotics.
Professor Barry O´Sullivan, University College Cork and Vice Chair of the EC High-Level Expert Group on AI gave a brief walkthrough of the development of AI starting from Alan Turing. He touched upon some of the strengths, weaknesses and trends of AI in the future. The current landscape is visualised in AI Watch.
Ilkka Niemelä, President of Aalto University (photo below), opened the session on AI governance by highlighting that Finland can only access the global market as a competitive nation if we continue to invest in research. The path from research to market is short and collaboration is beneficial.
Henrikki Salo-Pöntinen (photo below) is a Doctoral Researcher in Cognitive science at the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä. He also hosted the ETAIROS track of AI Day. His presentation discussed knowledge management and automated decision making (ADM) as tools affecting natural persons. We can build and support socially responsible comprehension management by using ADM as assistance but not relying solely and completely on it.
Meeri Haataja, CEO/Co-Founder of Saidot talked about operationalising AI governance with technology. AI business is available to most companies these days, but the question is how to scale up the operations. This requires systematic methodologies, open discussion on ethical AI, and views on end users.
AIGA aims at developing responsible AI governance. The consortium joins together the University of Turku, OP Financial Group and several more partners. Matti Mäntymäki and Antti Myllymäki introduced the collaboration, bringing up the need for AI governance, as we have seen a surge in ethical principles.
Susanna Pirttikangas, Research Director at University of Oulu was one of the speakers discussing 6G. She is looking forward to the new technologies of the future with positive expectations. While entering the era 6G and Metaverse, we should keep the human in the loop, and try to ensure the coverage of services extends to rural areas.
Pekka Laurila, CSO/Co-founder of ICEYE presented ICEYE’s space approach and its use of AI in earth observation. Today, there are 17 Finnish satellites in space. This new reliable real-time digital infrastructure provides data for e.g. insurance businesses to foresee disasters. Radar satellite technology can be combined with machine learning models to observe and interpret changes.
Dr. Juha Koponen, COO at CollectiveCrunch Oy presented some use cases of AI in Smart Forestry. For example prediction, change detection, plans, forest inventory, carbon monitoring, evaluation, buying and selling are made easier with machine learning models.
Dr. Himadri Majumdar, Program Manager of Quantum Programmes at VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland) praised Finland for preparedness, as he considered the Finnish quantum ecosystem as one of the strongest in the world. We are no longer just studying, but already engineering the new field, as forerunners of the quantum world. Majumdar recommended Google Quantum AI website for anyone wishing to get familiar with the subject.
Dr. Jussi Leinonen MD PhD, Principal Clinical Data Scientist at Bayer Oy introduced some challenges clinical trial and research are facing at the moment. His presentation on Bayer’s domain expertise featured patient centricity, use of data science, pattern recognition and external control arm. Here is a similar presentation given earlier this year.
Thank you for the wonderful and inspiring AI Finland AI Day 2021!
Links and materials:
AIGA, 2021 The Artificial Intelligence Governance and Auditing (AIGA)
FCAI, 2021: Can transparency make automated decision-making understandable?
Herwig C.H. Hofmann, 2021: An Introduction to Automated Decision-Making (ADM) and Cyber-Delegation in the Scope of EU Public Law
Leinonen, Jussi, 2021: Future Clinical Trials. Transforming Clinical Trials with Data Science and Patient Centricity
VTT, 2021: European Commission and Adra signed to strengthen AI, data and robotics expertise in Europe
Publication lists:
The photos are screenshots from the official stream of AI Finland 2021 taken by Ritva Savonsaari, and the content is largely based on content published originally on Twitter @AI_Hub_Tampere 2021.