StairwAI Project Overview: Consortium, Objectives, and Motivations

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The StairwAI project, funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 programme, aims to create an AI-on-demand platform to facilitate access to AI assets for a wide range of stakeholders. The consortium comprises 11 partners from 9 EU countries, bringing together multidisciplinary skills to maximize impact and stakeholder engagement. With a focus on gender equality, the project integrates a gender perspective into all policies and programs. By promoting women's participation and adhering to equal opportunities policies, StairwAI aims to contribute to gender equality in research and innovation. The platform's potential impact on the European industrial ecosystem is significant, especially for low-tech users.

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EGI Conference 20/10/2021 Michela Milano Michela Milano Universit Universit di Bologna di Bologna This project has received funding from the European Union s Horizon 2020 research and innovationprogramme under grant agreement No 101017142

Consortium 11 partners from 9 EU countries. Multidisciplinary skills needed to hit its outcomes maximizing impacts and stakeholders involvement at EU level. 5 higher education and research institutions UNIBO, UCC, UPC, TUE and INFN 1 SME TIL 3 no-profit organisations BCA, FBA and EGI.eu 2 companies HUA and THA Figure 23: Consortium across European Countries: The Coordinator has extensive experience in the coordination and management of actions funded by the EU. This reasonably ensures the project follows a scientific and technical rigour, operative complementarity and self-consistency. Technical partners (TIL, HUA and THA) have a key role in the piloting and demonstrating activities. The higher education and research institutions (UNIBO, UCC, UPC, TUE and INFN) are extremely dynamic and ensure the scientific soundness of the project's activities and the dissemination of results to maximise the replication impact. 3.3.1 Sex and gender analysis The consortium is aware of the regulations by the European Union on this issue and completely shares the principle of equality between women and men, not only to eliminate inequalities, but also to promote equality, as signed in the Treaty on European Union, and the Treaty of Amsterdam (May 1, 1999). Hence, the activities inside StairwAI wish to combine the integration of a gender perspective into all project policies and programs with specific actions in favour of women. To this extent, the Treaty of Amsterdam, which formalizes the gender commitment and the gender mainstreaming process at the European level is considered as a fundamental reference, as it mentions explicitly within the Part One Principles two aspects among the tasks and objectives of the Community: the elimination of inequalities (Article 2) and the promotion of equality between women and men (Article 3.2.). The consortium will strive to reach this objective by encouraging women's participation in project activities. Moreover, all partners have in-house regulations preventing discrimination of employment opportunities for women and some also have active promotion campaigns to increase their share of female employees. At the same time, StairwAI, adheres to the initiative No woman, no panel launched by the Open Society Foundation and promoted by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, encouraging all panels of debate in public events to count with the participation of women and ending up with the so-called Manels . The consortium recognizes that the EC is committed to promoting gender equality in R&I. Implementation of StairwAI will follow an equal-opportunities policy wherein careful attention will be paid to non-discrimination issues for call promotion, coach gender balance, and other aspects of project implementation that might be affected by a gender dimension. A guiding note will be drafted at the beginning of the project to provide best- practice criteria and identify/ address risks; gender aspects will be regularly monitored. The Project coordinator (a woman), and WP Consortium leaders (37,5% of the workpackages are led by women) will encourage, as part of their set objectives, further gender equality and the coordinator will be 68 StairwAI

Motivations The AI-on-demand platform is growing as a common one-stop-shop to guarantee access to AI assets (tools, data sets, experts, papers, courses etc.) and to unite the European community of AI stakeholders Existing platforms still out of reach for low-tech users especially SMEs European AI-on-demand platform could have a tremendous impact on the European industrial ecosystem and on European welfare in general if it becomes a Stairway to AIfor low-tech users.

Technical Objectives The StairwAI project aims at enriching the AI-on-demand platform with three services: Natural (Multi) Language interaction with the platform enabling low-tech users to propose their use case descriptions using their own language Horizontal matchmaking mapping user needs with AI assets on the platform (tools, data-sets, courses, papers, people) Vertical matchmaking for dimensioning hardware resources given the algorithm used and the application to be solved These services are based on Artificial Intelligence techniques And demonstrate the feasibility of the service layer developed as a cornerstone for the uptake of AI in low-tech SMEs through pilots and feasibility studies.

Socio-economic Objectives StairwAI aims to achieve the following economic objectives: contribute to strengthen European SMEs, including low-tech SMEs and DIH promote the sustainability of the AI-on-demand platform reduce the fragmentation of the European AI research and development landscape as well as the social objective provide a framework compliant with the principles of ethical AI use

Integration with the AI-on-demand platform

NLP and Horizontal matchmaking Available options for matchmaking Case study on market segment in natural language a resources Experts in a Assets for a NLP Tools People Data-sets Benchmarks Courses { F A I R N E S S User need a b resources Ontology of AI-assets ML User need b Experts in b Assets for b User need c Reputation /ranking c resources Experts in c Assets for c nd platform FEEDBACK LOOP

Vertical matchmaking Algorithm a Algorithm b Algorithm c User Optimization for algorithm/HW matching Constraints Time/cost Building on top of the Bonseyes platform, StairwAI will extend the work to enable the seamless participation of heterogeneous resource providers resource providers Matchmaking ML for matching algorithm/HW AI on demand platform Selected resource match Edge/IoT resources HPC resources Cloud Resources Pool of associated resources to the AI-on-demand platform

Stairway to AI: Ease the Engagement of Low-Tech users to the AI-on-Demand platform through AI, H2020 Open Calls BUILDING THE EUROPEAN AI ON-DEMAND PLATFORM

Open Calls 2 million funding Period 2022-2023 All info on the European AI-on-demand platform soon!!! https://www.ai4europe.eu/Open-Calls BUILDING THE EUROPEAN AI ON-DEMAND PLATFORM

StairwAI Open Calls Total FSTP : 2 million 28 Low tech SMEs (Pilots) 32 Low tech SMEs (Adopters) 3 Open Calls, 1 EoI for voucher suppliers >> 60k EUR each >> 10k EUR each VERTICALS None defined at this stage 1st OC and 2nd OC: Call for Low Tech SMEs (Pilots): StairwAI will support 6 months Support program the preparation of the feasibility plan for the adoption of AI solutions by the Stage 1: feasibility study Stage 2: pilot low tech sectors SMEs and delivering a pilot for the adoption of AI. 3rd OC: Call for Low Tech SMEs (Adopters): StairwAI will support just the They will be supported by AI experts and hardware providers throughout the whole duration of the programme. feasibility plan for the adoption of previously piloted AI solutions by low tech sectors SMEs Type of beneficiaries: low-tech SMEs Results Dates: 1st open call Q4 2021 60 low-tech SMEs supported 2nd open call Q4 2022 3rd open call Q2 2023 Website: https://stairwai.fundingbox.com/ (TBC)