The AIDA Project

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IBM, Paris-Saclay University, Softeam, Decisionbrain and STET have joined forces to create “AIDA”, a structuring project for the competitiveness of French companies that aims to position France as a leader in operational AI in companies.

Paris, September 22, 2020, – The consortium, led by IBM (NYSE: IBM), has announced the launch of its R&D project “AIDA” (Artificial Intelligence for Digital Automation). The project, with a total budget of €33 million, is financed with €12 million from the Programme d’investissements d’avenir (PIA), led by the Secrétariat général pour l’investissement (SGPI) and operated by Bpifrance.

The ambition of the “AIDA” R&D project is to develop a learning platform that will enable companies to improve their performance by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their operational systems. The development of “AIDA” benefits from the most recent advances of researchers at the University of Paris-Saclay.

This project, which supports the government’s AI strategy and brings together public/private players – including companies of different sizes (Group, ETI, SME) and the leading French research university – should lead to positioning France as a leader in the operational AI market as well as contributing to the international influence of its academic laboratories. It will also help create and maintain jobs in France in high-value-added fields and aims to accelerate the growth of SMEs and SMIs, especially internationally.

The “AIDA” platform, which combines AI and automation, aims to enable companies participating in the project to:

  • Find new automation opportunities to increase their productivity;
  • Improve the efficiency of their automated systems, including control;
  • Make better decisions and recommendations.

Thus, the employees of these companies will be able to be assisted in their daily functions by decision support tools and by the automation of certain operations (e.g., maintenance planning, team scheduling, report preparation, etc.).
“AIDA simultaneously addresses several AI challenges by leveraging the scientific excellence of the partner laboratories:

  • The limited validity of data: the context and rules are constantly evolving in business decision-making which limits Machine Learning and requires developing an AI capable of adapting to rapid changes in its environment (objectives, rules, competitive context, etc.);
  • Trust: the need for AI with explainable, auditable and controllable results;
  • Context complexity: since no decision is purely autonomous, AI must be able to take into account a context where processes and decisions are highly interdependent.

This project provides laboratories with additional development resources and promotes the formation of a technological ecosystem on the Paris-Saclay campus around the open platform AIDA ».

– Article source: bpi france salle de press.