Accelerat.ai: a new consortium to accelerate digital transformation in Portugal
INESC-ID has joined a wide ranging set of partners in Accelerat.ai — a new consortium whose goal is to accelerate the digital transformation of the public and private sectors in Portugal.
Representing an investment of 34.5 million euros supported by the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan (Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência, PRR), Accelerat.ai will be led by Defined.ai and include companies and research institutions as varied as INESC-ID, Instituto Superior Técnico, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, IBM, Microsoft or KPMG. Interested clients will include the banking sector (Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Novo Banco and Santander), the Portuguese Ministry of Health (e.g., the Portuguese National Health System, SNS), the Portuguese Ministry of Social Security, companies from the electricity and gas sectors (EDP and Galp), as well as other companies such as NOS, Worten and the insurance provider Fidelidade.
Accelerat.ai aims to improve and optimize customer support services across the Portuguese and European markets based on the development of a unique set of technological solutions that pair virtual assistants with contact centers in European Portuguese. On Accelerat.ai, Daniela Braga, founder of Defined.ai, commented that “Alone, we go faster, but together we go further, resulting from committed and motivated teamwork. It is with enthusiasm that I thank the team that has accompanied me in this great project and present in Portugal, the first virtual assistant 100% in my native language.”
Alberto Abad will lead INESC-ID’s participation in Accelerat.ai, a role that will mainly consist in investigating and exploring the capacity to mutually convert from speech to text and text to speech, also known as Automatic Speech Recognition and Speech Synthesis — a key component of Conversational AI. INESC-ID and IST will take responsibility for the development and derived research activities of the modules of the speech-to-speech conversational stack, particularly, those related with automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech for European languages, and very especially, European Portuguese. The impact of this research is expected to concentrate on promoting a faster deployment of new languages, more engaging and successful agents, as well as better acceptance by specific population groups.
Accelerat.ai is one of two Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related PRR-supported consortia that INESC-ID will be involved in. Have a read on that other AI PRR-supported ptoject, Responsible AI.
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.”