Open Innovation Lab for the Realization of Common Good AI Applications

How can the development and use of AI providing benefits for the common good be effectively supported? This is the key question addressed by the research project on the topic of the promotion of AI expertise across the board and the activation of (civil) society, which is supported by the Policy Lab Digital, Work & Society at the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS).

Digital technologies, in particular artificial intelligence (AI), have a key part to play in the transformation of society and the world of work. New technologies, above all applications for the common good that are based on AI, require a broad spectrum of skills that need to work together to effect societal progress. However, the individual AI skills needed to realise this are often lacking. This is precisely where the project comes in, addressing the underlying research question as to which concepts, tools, methods and services are suited to supporting the development and use of AI providing benefits for the common good. It brings the generation of research results together with the development of practical applications.

The research project is aimed both at users without specialist prior knowledge and developers. What they all have in common is that they wish to learn and are seeking to develop and implement AI providing benefits for the common good with their project ideas, be they a municipality, an administrative, research or educational institution, an association or club, a company (in particular SMEs and start-ups) or a citizen.

The offering is accordingly diverse: specialist presentations and workshops, a self-learning course (coming soon) in which the participants can develop their own chatbot, the provision of aids for the entire development process through to the use of AI solutions that provide benefits for the common good as well as the option of actually experiencing AI in the Open Innovation Lab, engaging with others in this space for demonstrations, get-togethers and events, and being able to work on projects together. The Open Innovation Lab is located at Ernst-Reuter-Platz in Berlin.

The project is run by the German-Turkish Advanced Research Centre for Information and Communication Technologies (GT ARC), an affiliated institute of the TU Berlin. This engages closely with the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (DAI-Lab) and the Agent Technologies in Business Applications and Telecommunications chair at the TU Berlin.

Link to the project home page: https://go-ki.org/en/.