MARIE's work for more responsible R&D once again proved useful, as one of the MARIE partners, Council of Tampere Region was invited to join a peer review process 'Foster the trustworthy use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in companies' organised by Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform.
The host of the peer review, Austria Wirtschaftsservice Gesellschaft mbH (aws), wanted experts' experiences on the introduction of national AI business promotion programme.
For 2 intensive and interesting days, the expert group from all around Europe discussed issues of AI ethics, business promotion and how to include RRI evaluation into AI project funding.
"The opportunity to peer and discuss about the issues of establishing a public funding program for AI solutions was very valuable, as the development work done in Tampere Region for ethical evaluation of AI projects has been a lonely road so far", says Tiina Ramstedt-Sen from the Council of Tampere Region. "Even though different guidelines for AI can be found and have been helpful during the process of development, similar kind of evaluation in innovation funding is not common".
Discussions with aws about their funding plans, ethical principals and final targets of funding gave an incredible opportunity to reflect the work done for evaluation criteria in Tampere Region. And without doubt, increased compatencies for further develoipment.
The process started in the beginning of this year, but the discussions will continue during the launch of the business promotion programme. For MARIE, it will be interesting to find out the real outcome of the funding programme and its ethical principles chosen.
Cover photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash.
