The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) together with the French National Research Agency (ANR, France), and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST, Japan) is announcing the first trilateral call for research proposals on “Artificial Intelligence” (AI).There has been remarkable progress in AI research in recent years. The progress of AI brings a tremendous opportunity, though at the same time it can potentially violate individual privacy and the right to informational self-determination. The three countries participating in this joint programme share the same values. Based on the added value obtained through the collaboration of the three countries, the aim is to present the direction of future digital economy and society through technical progress in AI research to strengthen trust, transparency and fairness as well as improving performance and investigating AI methods. This call is intended to finance research projects in AI, in the broad sense, on methodological advancement in core AI technologies and emerging AI technologies. The following themes are given as examples:
- knowledge extraction and learning: data mining and text mining, machine learning (supervised, self-supervised, unsupervised, by reinforcement, ...), complex decision rules design, decision process modelling and construction of decision support tools
- knowledge management methods and models, including knowledge representation and theories of knowledge reasoning, ontologies and their use in data enrichment and information retrieval, multi-agent systems, and the semantic web, etc.
- advancing the state of the art in AI in order to accomplish complex tasks (computer vision, natural language and speech processing, etc.), developing autonomous decision-making systems or allowing high-level interactions with human users
- human-centered approaches towards AI methods, e.g. considering, trusted AI, GDPR in future AI, democratisation of AI, integrity of data for fairness, AI ethics to avoid gender/age segmentation
Applicants to be funded by the DFG are requested to fulfil the eligibility requirements of DFG Research Grants (cf. the corresponding guidelines of the Research Grants Programme, DFG form 50.01). This includes the duty to cooperate (“Kooperationspflicht”) within Germany for members of non-university institutions with permanent positions.For detailed information on submission, eligibility, evaluation, schedule, etc. please refer to the full call text.
Proposals must be submitted in accordance with the ANR proposal preparation requirements by 25 October 2019, 10:00 CEST (17:00 JST). In parallel to submitting to the ANR, German applicants are required to submit a copy of the proposal to the DFG via elan, the DFG’s electronic proposal processing system.
