Artificial Intelligence from Finland 2 3 Table of Contents
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM FINLAND 2 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. AI STRATEGY DRIVES INNOVATION 2. RESEARCH AND EDUCATION 3. WHY FINLAND? 4. AI COMPANIES 4 5 AI STRATEGY DRIVES INNOVATION FINLAND AIMS TO BE THE LEADING COUNTRY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. AS A TECHNOLOGY SUPERPOWER, WE ARE ABLE TO FULLY UTILIZE ALL THE POSSIBILITIES OF AI THROUGHOUT THE SOCIETY. Finland initiated one of the world’s first Finland offers top-level AI education in national AI strategies and action plans in universities and raises the awareness of 2017 to boost research and education in the its citizens through public online courses, field of AI. The public sector is already in- such as Elements of AI. The Finns form a tegrating AI into its operations to increase tech-savvy society that is not afraid of new efficiency and improve services. For in- technologies and innovations, which makes stance, the Ministry of Finance initiated the the country an excellent place for develop- AuroraAI program that helps citizens and ing and applying novel AI technologies. companies by suggesting services based on their needs. By successfully applying AI, Finland has the potential to double its economic growth rate by 2035 (Accenture and Frontier Economics 2017). 6 7 STARTUPS DRIVING BUSINESS FINLAND BOOSTING INNOVATION AI ECOSYSTEMS Finland has a long tradition in AI research, Business Finland, the government organi- which has led to cutting-edge expertise. zation for innovation funding, investment, Large Finnish companies have built their trade and travel promotion, funds growth own AI development units, but the driving companies within the area of AI. Since 2017, force is the hundreds of innovative startups over 300 AI companies have received about with their roots in universities and research. EUR 200 million in funding in total. These innovators are successfully applying AI growth ecosystems are supported by AI in various business verticals, most an enterprise-driven partnership model commonly in healthcare, manufacturing, between companies, research organizations business tools and services. and public actors, which strives to find TRANSFERRING AI KNOWLEDGE solutions to global market disruptions and create new growth sectors in Finland. The Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) and regional initiatives, such as the Tampere AI Hub and the AI Academy at the University of Turku, drive AI commerciali- zation by effectively transferring knowledge and findings to startups and established businesses. Technology Industries of Finland (Teknologiateollisuus) has its own AI accelerator, FAIA, to speed up the deployment of AI. Finland’s wide offering of data pools is available for businesses, for instance, in healthcare to speed up AI development and adoption. 8 9 Silo.AI is the largest AI solution lab in the The ecosystem will involve the following CATALYSING Nordics focused on building human-centric groups: major companies that have chal- AI as a service. In its Growth Engine lenges in obtaining sufficient resources for project, Silo.AI aims to build an ecosystem AI activities, SMEs that lack the resources AI ECOSYSTEMS around its platform to bring together AI to invest in their own AI development, experts and technology partners. The main experts in artificial intelligence and technol- goals of the ecosystem are to generate new ogy partners that often struggle with inter- business for operators through AI-driven national sales, and research organizations FROM AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING AI BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM solutions and processes and to commer- for whom the AI marketplace offers ideas cialize Finnish top expertise, particularly in for projects and corporate collaboration. TO AUTONOMOUS SHIPPING AND PORT OPERATIONS, global markets. SILO.AI AND AWAKE.AI LEAD THE WAY IN FINNISH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Shipping and port logistics play a critical new digital services for all actors in the port role in international trade. More than 90% ecosystem. Actors range from port service of Finnish exports pass through ports. De- providers to infrastructure utilization to velopment is trending toward smarter ports shipping customers and cargo owners. and vessels and even autonomous ships. Toward this end, Awake.AI is developing The goal of Awake.AI is to be the world’s predictive analytics and models for key pro- most trusted smart ports and autonomous cesses in harbor operations. To facilitate the shipping platform and a global ecosystem involvement of new digital service providers orchestrator by 2025. for smart ports, the Awake.AI platform is a multi-sided network for many participants Awake.AI is a collaborative and open data to develop smart port cargo flows and a platform company that facilitates ecosys- future marketplace for buying and selling tem creation for smart ports and evolving and smart port- and ship-related services. autonomous shipping. The underlying objective of the Awake.AI platform is to increase operational efficiencies and create 10 11 RESEARCH AND EDUCATION FINLAND RANKS HIGH IN DIGITAL SKILLS. OUR STRENGTH LIES IN OUR TOP UNIVERSITIES AND ACCESSIBLE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES. LONG-TERM INTEREST IN TOP-LEVEL UNIVERSITY ACCESSIBLE LEARNING NEURAL NETWORKS EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES Finnish AI pioneer Teuvo Kohonen intro- In a country of 5.5 million people, major More than 1% of the total Finnish popula- duced his Self-Organizing Maps in the 80s, universities offer more than 250 individual tion has been trained on the basics of AI which led the way for larger research in AI courses, 40 master-level programs, by participating in the collaborative, free neural networks and pattern recognition 19 bachelor-level programs and 3 doctoral online course entitled Elements of AI. The in Finland. Nowadays, high-level research programs. The universities of applied course will soon be available in most EU and education in machine learning and AI sciences provide an additional 26 study languages and has already had participants is conducted in several universities across programs on the subject. Overall, about from over 170 countries. It is ranked as the country, as well as at the VTT Technical 6,300 students take at least one course in the world’s #1 online AI course according Research Centre of Finland. AI at Finnish universities every year. Sever- to the Class Central online course search al hundreds of students graduate from AI portal. Additionally, FCAI, Aalto Executive programs annually. Education and the University of Helsinki offer diplomas in AI. 12 13 FCAI LEADING AI RESEARCH FINNISH ACADEMY The Finnish Academy has six flagship pro- FUNDS AI RESEARCH grams, one being the Finnish Center for The Finnish Academy has an ICT 2023 Artificial Intelligence (FCAI). FCAI comp- program for R&D and innovation, which rises 60 professors and 300 researchers aims to strengthen knowledge and appli- and has a EUR 250 million budget for the cations in machine learning, industrial flagship term of 2019–2026. FCAI is one internet and user-centric digital of the European Commission’s Digital healthcare technologies and services. Innovation Hubs (AI DIH) formed by a com- munity of experts from Aalto University, SUPERPOWER OF the University of Helsinki and VTT. It brings together top talents in academia, industry EUROPEAN COMPUTING and the public sector for solving real-life CSC – IT Center for Science is a non-profit problems using both established and newly state-owned enterprise, owned by the unfolded AI. FCAI’s research mission is to Finnish state and higher education institu- create a new type of AI that is more data tions. CSC’s data center in Kajaani is home efficient, trustworthy and understandable. to Finland’s national data computing and It aims to build AI systems capable of management. The EuroHPC Joint Under- helping their users in AI-assisted decision- taking decided in 2019 to place one of the making, design and modeling. EuroHPC pre-exascale supercomputers in the Kajaani data center. This investment will make CSC’s data center one of the world’s FCAI RESEARCH largest players in the field of high-perfor- PROGRAMS INCLUDE: mance computing. When the LUMI super- computer begins its operations in spring 1. Agile probabilistic AI 2021, it will be one of the world’s fastest 2. Simulator-based inference computer systems and one of the most ad- 3. Next-generation data-efficient vanced platforms for artificial intelligence. deep learning 4. Privacy-preserving and secure AI CSC already provides Finnish startups with 5. Interactive AI free computing resources for their research 6. Autonomous AI projects through Business Finland’s 7. AI in society computing grant. Once LUMI begins its operations, even more computing resources will become available for companies. 14 15 WHY FINLAND? A HIGH LEVEL OF EDUCATION, RESEARCH, ACTIVE CO-OPERATION AND A BUZZING STARTUP SCENE FORM A FRUITFUL ENVIRONMENT FOR DEVELOPING AI IN FINLAND. #1 IN AVAILABILITY OF LATEST TECHNOLOGIES WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM GLOBAL EXTENSIVE RESEARCH COMPETITIVE INDEX 2017–2018 Finland’s high level of education and decades of research in machine learning and signal processing have formed a solid basis for Finnish AI know-how and development. Finland has the second largest number of AI experts per capita in Europe (LinkedIn Economic Graph 2019). #1 #1 IN DIGITAL THE MOST STABLE ACTIVE COOPERATION COMPETITIVENESS COUNTRY IN THE EU IN THE WORLD FOR THE 14TH Active cooperation between companies, DIGITAL ECONOMY AND SOCIETY YEAR IN A ROW universities and research centers is funded INDEX 2019 BY THE FUND FOR PEACE, by the state