Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets boost from Growth Fund

Fontys Information and Communication Technology

Let Universities of Applied Science and businesses make AI ready for market application

The National Growth Fund announced last week that it will make a quarter of its €4 billion budget available to strengthen research and innovation in the Netherlands. Part of that money will be spent on the key technology Artificial Intelligence (AI).

But how intelligent is AI really? And can this new technology already be applied 'just like that'? My answer to this question is a resounding no. AI is far from being 'finished'; we are still missing a number of essential ingredients. Do not focus only on research at universities. Higher vocational education (hbo) can also make an important contribution, together with industry and partners.

Data-driven decisions

The cork on which AI runs today is computing power and data, lots of data. Self-learning algorithms such as neural networks are fed large data sets and are able to discover patterns in them. Based on this technology, we can program data-driven decisions. In fact, these algorithms simply calculate correlations, the relationship between X and Y. But an AI that really understands things, that is, establishes cause-and-effect relationships and develops a mental model of how the world works, is still a long way off.

Read the complete article by Professor of AI & Big Data Gerard Schouten on Eindhovens Dagblad (Dutch).