NeuralShift: spinning-off artificial intelligence
Founded in 2021 out of questions asked and ideas raised during Miguel Freire‘s and Alexandre Borges‘ masters theses (both researched at INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico), NeuralShift is a new company that develops last-gen artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to build products tailored to companies’ specific automation needs.
From its very start, NeuralShift’s vision has been to integrate computer vision technologies, natural language processing, and sequential decision-making models to bring intelligence to the automation of processes that involve complex tasks (e.g., package sorting, damage identification, and document processing). On the multivariate uses of AI Arlindo Oliveira — a Distinguished Professor at Técnico (Oliveira supervised both Freire’s and Borges’ masters theses), President of INESC and one of the Advisors of NeuralShift — explains, “the application of advanced AI techniques, in computer vision and natural language understanding, has the potential to improve efficiency and customer service, reduce costs and provide data and analytical tools that can be used to redesign processes and services. Last-generation AI techniques will make it possible to offload to machines and algorithms repetitive tasks that are now consuming a significant fraction of available human resources, which can be redirected to higher value-added tasks.“
The best ideas often come from unexpected places. Miguel Freire himself tells the story: “We were both finishing our master thesis in deep reinforcement learning, both advised by Prof. Arlindo Oliveira, when he asked us to solve a problem that was to predict, using computer vision, if a car was damaged or not and where. Our solution ended up going nowhere, but made us realize that these technologies could be more broadly applied to solve novel problems in a number of areas. In particular, a lot of the recent advances in research in deep learning have yet to be applied in industry due to the lack of knowledge about these technologies, about what they can do, and about the type of problems they excel at. We wanted to understand what challenges companies faced and also provide them with a more ample view of the type of problems these deep learning technologies can solve that were hard to solve before. Around April 2021, NeuralShift was created to fulfill this vision.”
AI technologies can have a definitive and lasting impact on business efficient in a way that traditional software simply can’t. “For example, GPT, a transformer based natural language model, enables us to process text in a more holistic way, closer to how humans might do it, in a way that older methods couldn’t previously do with satisfactory results.” Freire adds that “One of our products uses a similar transformer model to process customer interactions. In this way, businesses can provide answers to their customers problems faster.”
Many see the industrial implementation of AI technologies as inevitable, and Freire agrees. “In the next years it is expected to have AI based-products in every industry, so for a company to be competitive it must use AI. We see ourselves helping businesses shift to this new paradigm and we also want to advocate for the responsible use of AI. We also want to guarantee that our solutions follow a number of principles, including explainability and fairness.” Freire is clear: “we should not only try to model the data as is, so that the model is effective at solving problems, but also as the world should be, so that it helps bring a fairer future. We’re currently a member of the Responsible AI Consortium, which includes other Portuguese startups, research centers and companies, all working towards the goal of AI technologies that are fair, transparent, privacy-preserving, and energy-sustainable.”
NeuralShift is one of several spin-offs that have been initiated at INESC-ID by researchers and ex-students over recent years. To have a look at some of these other companies please check out our spin-offs webpage.
Upcoming Events
NII International Internship Programme Presentation and Q&A by Emmanuel Planas
On April 30, Emmanuel Planas, the acting director of the Global Liaison Office (GLO) and responsible for the internationalisation program at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan, will give a presentation to introduce the NII and its internship program to INESC-ID students and IST’s Master’s in Computer Science students.
Date & Time: April 30, 14h00
Where: Sala Polivalente, Técnico – Taguspark
“The NII International Internship Program is an exchange activity with students from institutions with which NII has concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement. This incentive program aims at giving interns the opportunity for professional and personal development by engaging in research activities under the guidance and supervision of NII researchers.
The NII Internship Program is open to Research Master’s and PhD students who are currently enrolled at one of the partner institutions that have signed an MOU agreement with NII.”
Educational Workshop on Responsible AI for Peace and Security (UNODA)
On June 6 and 7, The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are offering a selected group of technical students the opportunity to join a 2-day educational workshop on Responsible AI for peace and security.
The third workshop in the series will be held in Porto Salvo, Portugal, in collaboration with GAIPS, INESC-ID, and Instituto Superior Técnico. The workshop is open to students affiliated with universities in Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, Oceania, and Asia.
Date & Time: June 6 a 7
Where: IST – Tagus Park, Porto Salvo
Registration deadline: April 8
Summary: “As with the impacts of Artificial intelligence (AI) on people’s day-to-day lives, the impacts for international peace and security include wide-ranging and significant opportunities and challenges. AI can help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but its dual-use nature means that peaceful applications can also be misused for harmful purposes such as political disinformation, cyberattacks, terrorism, or military operations. Meanwhile, those researching and developing AI in the civilian sector remain too often unaware of the risks that the misuse of civilian AI technology may pose to international peace and security and unsure about the role they can play in addressing them. Against this background, UNODA and SIPRI launched, in 2023, a three-year educational initiative on Promoting Responsible Innovation in AI for Peace and Security. The initiative, which is supported by the Council of the European Union, aims to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in mitigating the unintended consequences of civilian AI research and innovation for peace and security. As part of that initiative, SIPRI and UNODA are organising a series of capacity building workshops for STEM students (at PhD and Master levels). These workshops aim to provide the opportunity for up-and-coming AI practitioners to work together and with experts to learn about a) how peaceful AI research and innovation may generate risks for international peace and security; b) how they could help prevent or mitigate those risks through responsible research and innovation; c) how they could support the promotion of responsible AI for peace and security.”