Call: AI for human empowerment (AI, Data and Robotics Partnership)

This destination will directly support the following Key Strategic Orientations, as outlined in the Strategic Plan:

• KSO D, Creating a more resilient, inclusive and democratic European society, prepared and responsive to threats and disasters, addressing inequalities and providing high-quality health care, and empowering all citizens to act in the green and digital transitions

Proposals for topics under this Destination should set out a credible pathway contributing to the following expected impact:

• A human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies, through a two-way engagement in the development of technologies, empowering end-users and workers, and supporting social innovation.

As Europe takes the lead in the green and digital transitions, workers, regions, and societies are faced with extremely fast transformations, and will be differently affected by these changes. The rapid adoption of new technologies offers an immense potential for improved standards of living, safer mobility, better healthcare, new jobs, or the personalisation of public services. At the same time, it presents risks such as skills mismatches, digital divides, customer lock-in, or serious breaches of security or privacy.

As Europe sets off on its path to recovery towards a greener, digital and more resilient economy and society, the need to improve and adapt skills, knowledge and competences becomes all the more important. Developments in digital and enabling technologies have the potential to enhance social inclusion, can inform up-skilling training programmes and ensure a two-way engagement with society with regard to developing technologies.

The issue of trust has become central in the use of technologies, following revelations about the exploitation of personal data, large-scale cybersecurity and data breaches, and growing awareness of online disinformation. As outlined in the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (COM(2020)65), for AI technologies, trust requires in particular improving transparency (explainability, expected levels of performance). For the Internet, increasing trust requires new tools and services to ensure that GDPR is a reality for end-users.

It is also an opportunity for Europe to re-gain presence on the consumer electronics market, by developing new interactive applications in various sectors with solutions meeting European values and requirements in terms of privacy and security. The COVID-19 crisis has also shown how important distance and innovative learning is for society.

Actions under this Destination will support EU objectives of inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centred approach to technology development that is aligned with European social and ethical values, as well as sustainability. These actions will further contribute to addressing the challenges faced by European industry and support the creation of sustainable, high-quality jobs by targeting skills mismatches, the need to empower workers, and ethical considerations relating to technological progress.

Actions should devote particular attention to openness of the solutions and results, and transparency of the research process. To ensure trustworthiness, public awareness and support, wide adoption by user communities for the benefit of society, actions should promote the highest standards of transparency and openness. Actions should ensure that the processes and outcomes of research and innovation align with the needs, values and expectations of society, in line with Responsible Research and Innovation.

This Destination is structured into the following headings, which group topics together with similar outcomes to address a common challenge:

Leadership in AI based on trust

The objective of this heading is to ensure autonomy for Europe in AI, leading the way in research, development and deployment of world-class technologies that are beneficial to humans individually, organisationally and societally, and that adheres to European values, such as the principles reflected in our fundamental rights and environmental sustainability. Technologies need to be developed that industries and citizens will trust, so and that they could be applied in a wide range of applications and industrial sectors. Trustworthy AI is particularly key in applications such as (but not limited to) healthcare or in diverse critical infrastructures such as energy and transportation.

Some topics of this heading are under the co-programmed Partnership ‘AI, Data and Robotics’.

Proposals are encouraged to link with relevant European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and its Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), in particular the EIT Digital.

EIT Digital plays role in shaping technologies and innovations that work for people. At least two of its focus areas, Digital Wellbeing and Digital Cities, address directly topics such as ethical artificial intelligence, predictive analytics or augmented and virtual reality that are relevant to this areas. The solutions will benefit from the increasing will of citizens to participate in the sharing economy. EIT Digital, through projects with cities for example, improves engagement and inclusiveness of the citizens and of the visitors by increasingly organising and exposing data, especially in real time and along with analytics and machine learning. Augmented and virtual reality of the cities are another facet of exposing or simulating city data from the past, present or future to the benefit of citizens. ​

An Internet of Trust

The issue of trust in the internet has become central, following revelations about the exploitation of personal data, large-scale cybersecurity and data breaches, and growing awareness of online disinformation. A 2019 survey[[]] shows that half of the global internet users are more concerned about their online privacy compared to a year previously. Distrust in the Internet is causing people to change the way they behave online, for example by disclosing less personal information. Users also express an increasing level of distrust of social media platforms.

The objective of this heading is to develop a trustworthy digital environment, built on a more resilient, sustainable, and decentralised internet, to empower end-users with more control over their data and their digital identity, and to enable new social and business models respecting European values.

eXtended Reality (XR)

Due to its low presence in the consumer electronics industry, Europe is increasingly dependent on external providers in this area. This raises concerns about its digital sovereignty in crucial domains such as digital interaction services that are being adopted by a growing number of European users and industries. The COVID-19 crisis has shown how important distance and innovative learning is for society, our children, their parents and their teachers, maintaining social and educational links under challenging circumstances. Emerging technologies such as virtual reality, eXtended Reality or immersive environments provide numerous opportunities for personalised, innovative, efficient and inclusive learning, for learners of all ages, gender and condition

The objective of this heading is to gain industrial leadership in eXtended Reality technologies and immersive environments, while ensuring the European values of privacy, ethics and inclusiveness. It also aims to support the digital transformation of education through these technologies in particular.

Systemic approaches to make the most of the technologies within society and industry.

This heading promotes various systemic approaches to encourage creativity and make the most of the technologies developed elsewhere within society and industry. They include testing ideas in local communities; support for IP, standardisation and industry-academia exchanges; art-driven design; and assessments of complex socio-economic systems. These are complemented by support for a network of National Contact Points (NCPs), with a special emphasis on engaging with new actors.

Activities beyond R&I investments will be needed to realise the expected impacts: testing, experimentation, demonstration, and support for take-up using the capacities, infrastructures, and European Digital Innovation Hubs made available under the Digital Europe Programme; further development of skills and competencies via the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, in particular EIT Digital and EIT Manufacturing; upscaling of trainings via the European Social Fund +; use of financial instruments under the InvestEU Fund for further commercialisation of R&I outcomes; and links to the thematic smart specialisation platform on industrial modernisation

Expected impact

Proposals for topics under this Destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to a human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies, and more specifically to one or several of the following impacts:

• Increased inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centred approach to technology development that is aligned with European social and ethical values, as well as sustainability;
• Sustainable, high-quality jobs by targeting skills mismatches, the need to empower workers, and ethical considerations relating to technological progress[[2019 CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust]].

Expected Outcome:

• Truly mixed human-AI initiatives for human empowerment
• Trustworthy hybrid decision-support systems

Scope:

Build the next level of perception, visualisation, interaction and collaboration between humans and AI systems working together as partners to achieve common goals, sharing mutual understanding and learning of each other’s abilities and respective roles.

Innovative and promising approaches are encouraged, including human-in the loop approaches for truly mixed human-AI initiatives combining the best of human and machine knowledge and capabilities, tacit knowledge extraction (to design the next generation AI-driven co-creation and collaboration tools embodied e.g. in industrial/working spaces environments).

Each proposal will focus on one of the two following research objectives, and clearly identify it:

1. Reach truly mixed human-AI initiatives for human empowerment. The approaches should combine the best of human and machine knowledge and capabilities including shared and sliding autonomy in interaction, addressing reactivity, and fluidity of interaction and making systems transparent, fair and intuitive to use, which will play a key role in acceptance. The systems should adapt to the user rather than the opposite, based on analysis, understanding and anticipation about human behaviour and expectations.
2. Trustworthy hybrid decision-support, including approaches for mixed and sliding decision-making, for context interpretation, for dealing with uncertainty, transparent anticipation, reliability, human-centric planning and decision-making, interdependencies, and augmented decision-making. Transparency, fairness, technical accuracy and robustness will be the key, together with validation strategies assessing also the quality of the decision of the AI supported socio-technical system.

All proposals should adopt a human-centred development of trustworthy AI and investigate and optimise ways of human-AI interaction, key for acceptance and democratisation of AI, to allow any user to take full advantage of the huge benefits such technology can offer, regardless of their age, race, gender or capabilities. This includes development of methods to improve transparency, in particular for human users, in terms of explainability, expected levels of performance which are guaranteed/verifiable and corresponding confidence levels, accountability and responsibility, as well as perceived trust and fairness. AI could also be used to empower humans in supporting them to improve responsible behaviours, where appropriate, but this should be done in full respect of the requirements ensuring trustworthy AI, including human autonomy.

Innovative scientific approach towards human-centric approaches will require multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches paying particular attention to intersectional factors (gender, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, disability) including SSH and other disciplines relevant to stimulate novel research avenues, and eventually improve user-acceptance. Collaborative design and evaluation with users involvement should also be considered.

As a pilot activity, proposals in this topic will dedicate part of their activities on investigating novel ways of engagement by citizens or citizen representatives with AI development, with a view of optimising experience towards improving usability and experience for citizens (both at professional or daily life environment).

All proposals should contribute to build the next level of perception, visualisation, interaction and collaboration, and understanding between humans and AI systems working together as partners to achieve common goals, sharing mutual understanding of each other’s abilities and respective roles.

All proposals are expected to embed mechanisms to assess and demonstrate progress (with qualitative and quantitative KPIs, benchmarking and progress monitoring, as well as illustrative application use-cases demonstrating concrete potential added value), and share results with the European R&D community, through the AI-on-demand platform, a public community resource, to maximise re-use of results, either by developers, or for uptake, and optimise efficiency of funding. Activities are expected to achieve TRL 4-5 by the end of the project.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on AI, Data and Robotics.

All proposals are expected to allocate tasks to cohesion activities with the PPP on AI, Data and Robotics and funded actions related to this partnership, including the CSA HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-02.

eligible non-EU countries:

• countries associated to Horizon Europe

• low-and middle-income countries

Legal entities which are established in countries not listed above will be eligible for funding if provided for in the specific call conditions, or if their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority.

Specific cases:

• Affiliated entities - Affiliated entities are eligible for funding if they are established in one of the countries listed above.
• EU bodies - Legal entities created under EU law may also be eligible to receive funding, unless their basic act states otherwise.
• International organisations - International European research organisations are eligible to receive funding. Unless their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority, other international organisations are not eligible to receive funding. International organisations with headquarters in a Member State or Associated Country are eligible to receive funding for ‘Training and mobility’actions and when provided for in the specific call conditions.

Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call conditions , legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in actions provided that the consortium includes:

• at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State;and
• at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

Proposal page limits and layout:

The application form will have two parts:

• Part A to be filled in directly online  (administrative information, summarised budget, call-specific questions, etc.)
• Part B to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system

Page limit - Part B: 45 pages

To ensure a balanced portfolio covering a broad range of AI research areas, grants will be awarded to applications not only in order of ranking but at least also to the highest ranked proposal addressing focus 1 (mixed human-AI initiatives) and the highest ranked proposal addressing the focus 2 (hybrid decision-support), provided that the applications attain all thresholds.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 2-3 and achieve TRL 4-5 by the end of the project.