600 Researchers together for the new CINI National Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems

[PRESS RELEASE] The decision to undertake this new challenge by the Italian University is driven by the awareness of the strategic value of research in this field, comparable to the spread of electricity in the nineteenth century.

Recent advances in Machine Learning and Deep Learning and the availability of huge computing power have in fact led to the spread of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the consequent transformation of relevant social, economic and industrial processes. Today AI is a combination of information technologies that, thanks to the progressive availability of huge amounts of data resulting from the digital transformation, constitute the elementary components for the creation of intelligent systems, technologies capable of perceiving the outside world, learning, reasoning and acting as a biological system.

Artificial Intelligence, therefore, refers to systems that show an “intelligent behaviour”, capable of analyzing the environment and making decisions with a certain degree of autonomy.

AI can be a powerful tool to increase human capabilities and to create autonomous and collaborative systems and robots and it is therefore important to understand its potential but also its ethical and social implications.

The new opportunities created by AI entail in fact new vulnerabilities and risks: society and individuals can be exposed to automatic discrimination, violation of privacy, loss of autonomy and lack of transparency. These risks can undermine stakeholder confidence and acceptance of new opportunities offered by technology.

CINI, therefore, intends to deepen and coordinate the work of all areas of AI to develop the elementary components of the new generations of intelligent systems and services. This will allow understanding many technologies in a single paradigm: from perceptual systems to systems of machine learning and reasoning, to intelligent systems able to act on the environment, new systems and information services such as retrieval, Q&A, and user profiling systems, including cybersecurity and analysis of social networks oriented systems.

Italy has a great tradition in AI and, in this context, the need has arisen for streamlining the efforts of universities and research centres with the creation of a new “Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems, AIIS” CINI National Laboratory and by paving the way for an effective Italian artificial intelligence ecosystem. A system that will include all the skills and will be devoted to pointing out the national excellence so as to strengthen the scientific and technological role of Italy on a European and global scale.

The Laboratory aims to contribute to ongoing national scientific and technological initiatives such as the National Clusters and Competence Centers of the Enterprise 4.0 program, as well as to industrial research and Public Administration activities.

The Laboratory, led by director Rita Cucchiara from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and by deputy director Marco Gori from the University of Siena, currently includes more than 600 Italian researchers from 40 universities and top research centers, such as the National Research Council (CNR), the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK).

As Professor Cucchiara puts it: “This is the first time that Italian IT has sent such a strong signal of its presence and of the awareness that Italy must and can play a big role in the development of the technologies of the future. Artificial intelligent systems are the result of human intelligence. We want it to be Italian too”.

The presentation of the initiative will take place in the Great Hall of the IT, Automation and Management Department of the Sapienza University in via Ariosto 25 in Rome from 10 am to 1 pm on July 4.

Info: , Communication Manager of the National Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems – AIIS