In April, the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission delivered evidence-based advice recommending a European institute for AI in science.
At the time, the Advisors recommended that this should be a distributed institution, not a single centralised organisation. They dubbed it “EDIRAS”, “European Distributed Institute for AI in Science", and proposed that it would ensure robust and ethical AI development that aligns with European values, including fairness, transparency, and inclusivity.
Following the announcement of President von der Leyen’s political priorities for the next term today, Professor Nicole Grobert, Chair of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, said:
“It’s great to see this proposal is now gaining traction. We need to make sure that we think carefully about how an AI institute is designed, because it really matters.”
“It should provide fair access to massive high-performing computational power, a sustainable cloud infrastructure, funding for research with AI and AI training programmes for researchers in all disciplines to explore and adopt AI in their sciences.”
“We advised in April that a distributed model would bring many advantages and avoid some of the pitfalls of a single monolithic entity.”
