HRH Crownprince Haakon Magnus wanted insights on AI’s future

Celebrity attention and innovation focus

When His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon Magnus wanted to know more about artificial intelligence, he invited NorwAI to a breakfast meeting in Stiftsgården, the royal residence in Trondheim. Over coffee, soft-boiled eggs and rolls, the conversation quickly picked up speed this October morning.

Professor and center leader Jon Atle Gulla was inspired and gave a concentrated and pinpointed introduction to the subject in general, and NorwAI in particular. The Crown Prince followed up with questions and comments on the importance of technology for future Norway. The tone was jovial.
 

Line of visits 

The royal attention added to the line of visits to NTNU and NorwAI from companies, organisations and commissions wanting further insights on AI as a technology gamechanger.

Among them were the Government Commission on Free Speech headed by the highly profiled Schibsted owner1s CEO Kjersti Løken Stavrum. The Commission showed particular interest, naturally, in language technologies as an influencer on democratic processes. 
 

Critical questions on the impact of social media and non-explainability in technology’s “black boxes” were focused. But also, the many new language plattforms other than American and Chinese ones, bear future fruits of increased interactions and easy access to insights from many communities around the globe.  

Innovation surfacing

Summing up the first leg of Norwegian Research Center for AI Innovations, a focal point is preparing for innovations. Organizing research at the one hand, and systematically engaging partners in ideas and ongoing challenges on the other, is heralding NorwAI’s ambitions for extraordinary innovations. 

Among actions are distributing a methodology from Schibsted for analyzing new product ideas to be available to the partners. Also use cases are analyzed to identify specific areas for cooperation between the partners. 

A promising project is, however, but still in early phases, is building the ultimate Norwegian language model as a platform for new services.  The work will be a major, cross partner achievement headed by NTNU and the University of Oslo.  Read more: bit.ly/3q9ofOp

Protypes 

Prototypes are on its way. For instance, partner DnB’s interest in testing human like robots and their ability to AI-driven conversations. The robot Kaia is not a regular chatbot:

 Kaia is an AI controlled artificial head, and can with advanced computer programs, be trained to have a spoken dialogue with people, memorize what is said there and then, in addition, also remember from previous dialogues. Kaia can also add facial expressions and head movements that give a vivid impression of what is being said.

Combined with the development of the new, colossal Norwegian language model that NorwAI is developing with the University of Oslo, Kaia will have a completely different vocabulary for a lively dialogue with speech.

- Even though most people get better advice by talking to people, the threshold is too high for some. We have customer experiences and surveys telling us that some customers prefer digital consulting. They may be reluctant to talk to others. They may feel more comfortable, ask more, and feel more convenient having a digital dialogue at a time and circumstance of their own choice, says NorwAI partner SpareBank 1 SMN's Knut Eilif Halgunset whern he met Kaia at the NorwAI Innovate Conference. Read more: bit.ly/3pesoRG

Also Telenor’s interest in IoT and camera censors’ ability to identify and detect movements under changing light and distance circumstances is another project are on it's way.  

Strenghtening female participation

Gender policy is important to NorwAI. It surfaces in the composition of the Innovation Board as well as partnering with other SFI’s on mentoring for female candidates. Also, the NorwAI Innovate Conference, a major newcomer in Norway’s dissemination and conference community, attracted a substantial number of female keynote speakers and organisators, including NorwAI Core member Anne Marthine Rustad of SINTEF. 
 

Anne Marthine presented NorwAI and her own work for industry 2.0 for a large crowd of female student at the breakfast event of Ada and BRAIN, two organizations working to stimulate female engagement in tech. NorwAI was a proud partner to the event co-located to NorwAI Innovate. 

NorwAI Innovate

The goal for the conference is to be the most important meeting place for the Norwegian AI environment, with a special focus on societal significance, innovation and relationship building between students, industry and academia. Through relevant and acclaimed speakers from academia and industry, a hackathon for promising students with strong involvement from the industry on the organizer side and a poster exhibition that constitutes an additional meeting place between PhD students and industry, NorwAI Innovate is well underway for its goals.