On June 15th the Netherlands Innovation Network in Sweden brought a visit to the main-hub of AI Sweden in Gothenburg. AI Sweden is the Swedish National Center for applied Artificial Intelligence, supported by the Swedish government and the public and private sectors across the country. The center is collaborating with around 100 partners representing private companies, the public sector, academia and research institutes. Their main office is located in Gothenburg, but they also have ‘nodes’ in Stockholm, Lund, Örebro, Luleå, Sundsvall, Skellefteå, Linköping and Karlskrona, giving AI Sweden a presence all over Sweden.

After a welcome and a tour through the office, Strategic Program Manager, Peter Kurzwelly explained more about the organization, their projects and collaboration with partners. Kurzwelly said that the organization had grown significantly over the past two years and that AI Sweden now has around forty employees.

Part of the visit was a presentation about AI Sweden’s ‘Edge Lab” by Head of Data Factory, Mats Nordlund. The Edge Lab is a unique testbed environment that enables developers, data scientists, students, researchers, and other users to explore and learn about the possibilities and limitations of Edge AI. AI Sweden has joined forces with its partners, Zenseact, HPE, Volvo Cars and Ericsson, to launch Edge Lab. The lab will give AI Sweden’s partners the chance to place themselves at the forefront of edge computing and federated learning by collaborating on specific projects and quickly building a work environment for experiments. 

Kurzwelly also explained more about their recently opened AI Ethics Lab. The purpose of the Swedish AI Ethics Lab is to provide guidance and support in implementing ethics in AI development, and will be piloted during the course of 2021. Both AI Sweden and the Netherlands Innovation Network in Sweden perceived the like-minded focus on the importance of ethics in AI as an important topic for further cooperation.

Source: Innovation Network Sweden
Featured image by: Unsplash. Credits: Lars Kienle