Estonian Center of Excellence in AI to open in Tartu

TALLINN - On Tuesday, an opening event for the Estonian Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence is to take place at the Delta building of the University of Tartu, focusing on how to achieve the reliability of artificial intelligence and harness it for societal benefit.

Meelis Kull, head of the Estonian Center of Excellence in AI and associate professor at Tartu University, said that the center will develop innovative methods to create reliable artificial intelligence systems.

"Today's artificial intelligence is very capable but resembles an employee who overestimates their skills. It often happens that artificial intelligence makes mistakes while remaining very confident. Such errors can cause a lot of damage in tasks with significant responsibilities. Therefore, the goal of the center is to develop methods to increase reliability and to find application areas where artificial intelligence is already sufficiently reliable and can help society," Kull said.

Participating in the Estonian Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence are the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, and Cybernetica AS. Representatives from all of these organizations will speak during the first part of the opening event. Among them, Tallinn University of Technology professor Rain Ottis will discuss artificial intelligence and security issues, Cybernetica AS senior researcher Liina Kamm will address privacy and e-government topics, and University of Tartu associate professor Jaan Aru will talk about artificial intelligence in education.

In the second part of the opening event, representatives from the Government Office, the Justice Ministry, and entrepreneurs will introduce their perspectives on the use of AI. Among the speakers is a member of Academia Europaea and the Estonian parliament Margit Sutrop, who will provide a philosophical background on the use of artificial intelligence.

The Estonian Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence brings together 13 research groups focusing on developing AI knowledge, hybrid AI systems, safety barriers,  reliability, privacy, and security. The center's applied research areas include e-governance, cybersecurity, education, healthcare, and business processes.