FCAI aims to import AI to core of business

FCAI, the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence, received a million euros in funding to develop easy-to-use artificial intelligence intended for corporations, said a press release issued by the University of Helsinki.

“We want to make Finnish companies understand how pervasive the change AI brings is. It doesn’t mean deploying one piece of AI, but a whole new operational philosophy. AI must be imported to the core of the internal development of the company“, said Arto Klami, assistant professor, from the University of Helsinki and FCAI.

This is how Netflix, the streaming video service, works, for example. It uses AI methods to deduce things from its user data; things like what kind of superhero to have in their next TV series.

This means that the AI software digs through the customers’ watching and predicts their needs, which controls the company’s investment decisions. Corporate directors may use AI to make decisions based on data, instead of having AI only take care of some individual tasks.

FCAI recently received a million euros of funding from the centennial foundation of Technology Industries of Finland and Jane and Aatos Erkko’s foundation.

With this funding, FCAI will build AI software that companies can incorporate into the processes they already have in place. The goal is to make this possible without the employees of the company having to understand AI in depth.

The three-year project Interactive Artificial Intelligence for Driving R&D starting at the beginning of 2019 will try to help especially industrial companies to deploy AI.

According to Klami, industrial companies could use AI methods for chemical or other industrial processes, for example, or to simulate the behaviour of people. Many companies are already using advanced models and simulators, but combining them with AI has been difficult so far.

“These past years, we have developed new, revolutionary AI methods and open source software to this end, but we still need further research“, said Klami.