On 15 April 2024, 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 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.
The Scientific Advice Mechanism to the European Commission (SAM) published its advice on the best use of AI in science. This advice is intended to design and support the overall European Commission’s strategy for AI in research and innovation.
Following today’s announcement of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen‘s political priorities for the next term, Professor Nicole Grobert, Chair of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, said: “It’s great to see this proposal 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,” he added.
“We advised in April that a distributed model would bring many advantages and avoid some of the pitfalls of a single monolithic entity.”
