Background
Our society is undergoing a rapid transformation due to the convergence of many digital technologies. AI is central to this change and offers major opportunities to improve our lives. Although AI has caught a lot of attention in society, the education and research in AI and AI-related areas must be strengthened. Increasing the knowledge, building networks, and exchanging experiences will be crucial in determining how to approach the development and use of AI.
The Nordic AI Meet represents an important step forward in advancing AI research in the Nordics, and provides a crucial platform for knowledge exchange regarding AI and its applications in the Nordics. This is particularly important and useful when considering the potential future challenges and opportunities faced by the public sector, industry or civil society regarding the use of AI.
Relevant topics at the symposium are not only related to basic AI research but also to applied AI research in the natural sciences, medicine and social sciences. This is an arena where topics such as the consequences of applied AI can be discussed and analyzed.
Bringing early career researchers together
PhD students and Postdocs are a key group of scientists who in the following years will contribute to the shaping of the new research directions.
The main purpose of the symposium is to create an annual meeting place where early career researchers can learn about new ideas, methods and theories within the field of AI that will be useful in developing knowledge-based applications of AI, as well as build a professional network. This annual event is seen as an interface between interdisciplinary scientific research.
Innovation on display
This year´s conference, like previous years, featured a wide array of presentations, keynote speeches and discussions, all focused on the developments in AI. Nordic AI Meet provided great opportunities for networking and collaboration. Attendees showcased their research through oral talks and poster sessions, fostering connections that may lead to future collaborations and partnerships. As per tradition, the Nordic AI Meet presents awards to the best oral presentation and best poster presentaiton.
The winning poster was developed by Kaustubh Chakradeo, Neil Scheidwasser, Alexandros Katsiferis, Seth Flaxman, Swapnil Mishra and Samir Bhatt - Malaria Prediction with Remote Sensing using Unsupervised Contrastive Learning. Viktoria Schuster and Anders Krogh won the award for best oral presentation for their research about The Deep Generative Decoder: Encoder-less representation learning with flexible priors.
The NordicAIMeet also featured an industry segment, where early career researchers could be inspired by how AI, machine learning and robotics is employed in different contexts. The segment was introduced and moderated by Signe Riemer-Sørensen from SINTEF. The invited speakers were Henrik Eldon Cullen from Corti, Lars Horn from Skanska and Goran Vuksic from SyntheticAIdata. Participanting researchers were introduced to opportunities in industry, and the industry representatives were able to engage with early career researchers and discuss opportunities for collaboration.
Keynote Insights
The conference featured several renowned keynote and invited speakers who shared their insights into the present and future of AI. The keynote and invited speakers were:
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Professor Yngvi Björnsson (Reykjavik University)
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Professor Pascal Fua (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)
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Professor Elisa Barney Smith (Luleå University of Technology)
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Professor Martin Gebster (University of Klagenfurt and Graz University of Technology)
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Lauren Wilcox, PhD (Google Research)
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Professor Jana Kosecka (George Mason University)
RoadAI competition
In connection with Nordic AI Meet, the winner of the RoadAI competition was also announced. The competition invited teams from all over the world to delve into data from a road construction site in Viken, Norway including GPS data from dump trucks, machine data including daily fuel consumption, and drone maps of the construction site. The challenge was to demonstrate how the data can be exploited for road construction to become more sustainable. The competition garnered significant attention with over 20 registered teams. The winning team was from Think Evolve. The second place was shared between team NoDig and team Data Roadsters. For more information about the competition and the winning teams, please click here.
Looking Ahead
With the success of this and the past years’ symposiums, we are excited to announce that next year’s Nordic AI Meet will be hosted in Helsinki, Finland. As AI continues to shape our world, it’s clear that early career stage researchers are poised to be the driving force behind AI breakthroughs.
In a rapidly evolving field like AI, conferences like Nordic AI Meet play a crucial role in nurturing and showcasing the talent of early career stage researchers. The future of artificial intelligence looks brighter than ever, thanks to the dedication and innovation of these early career AI talents.
See you next year in Helsinki!