prg.ai newsletter #35

👏 Local AI scene news that makes us proud

Alquist still among the best

In this year’s Amazon Alexa Prize, the Alquist team came in third place globally. In an international competition of more than 200 teams, the CTU FEL student team led by Jan Šedivý made it to the finals. This year’s bronze is yet another in a series of top placings – after last year’s victory and 2nd and 3rd place in previous years, this is further confirmation that Alquist is among the world’s top.

Restoring biodiversity

Scientists from the Centre for Artificial Intelligence at the FEL CTU are contributing to the automatic re-identification of sea turtles, reptiles and other animals using advanced artificial intelligence tools. This is increasingly being used to help mitigate the severe impacts of the climate crisis, such as the loss of the biological diversity.

The robotic watchdog pack

Axis Communications and two teams from the Department of Cybernetics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of CTU presented the integration of autonomous drones Fly4future and the robotic dog Spot from Boston Dynamics into an IP camera system at an event for security experts. 

AI weather forecast

How to teach AI to predict the weather in the best way possible? See the video by MS. Petr Šimánek from the Data Science Laboratory of FIT CTU. He works, among other things, on the project of using artificial intelligence to improve the prediction of rainfall.

Matfyz hosted prestigious international conference

The Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University was proud to host the prestigious ICAPS 2023 conference this summer. This leading international conference on automated planning and scheduling attracted nearly 300 researchers from around the world, including speakers from the USA, Canada and other countries.

Will AI replace God?

How does advanced technology affect human spirituality? Can artificial intelligence help discover the human soul? And is there a risk that AI will one day replace God? A joint project of researchers from the Evangelical Theological Faculty and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University is touching on such questions and much more.

Personalized ChatGPT

Blindspot AI has launched a virtual assistant called AskYourData. This assistant works on the basis of ChatGPT, only it’s trained on the company’s internal data. Therefore, it can serve as an instant personalised mentor in any company.

Big news from Phrase

Phrase has welcomed Dr. Alon Lavie to the position of Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Research. Dr. Lavie has been at the forefront of AI research in language technologies for many years and his extensive experience in the field will complement Phrase’s strong leadership in these industries. 

This originally Czech company has raised almost 300 million CZK to develop its AI in translation. With a team of specialists working with AI since 2017, Phrase is going to use this investment from Canadian CIBC to further advance the field of machine translation and language models.

DNA analysis among the best ideas of the year

DNAi’s revolutionary Floxgen software is among the top 12 Vodafone ideas of the year. It speeds up the processing of genomic data and facilitates early diagnosis of genetic diseases. It can process, anonymise and make available a huge amount of genomic data (DNA). This will significantly speed up the work of bioinformaticians and thus help doctors. 

Petr Baudiš: Czechia cannot market talent

In an interview with e15, Petr Baudiš, founder of the startup Rossum, expressed the potential of Prague as a centre of scientific knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence. The only thing the Czech Republic cannot sell is talent in the field, we import it. Where should society be heading? And will artificial intelligence help us get there? Read the full article.

Resistant AI among top Czech startups

Forbes has compiled a ranking of the ten most innovative startups of 2023. The imaginary gold medal this year went to Better Stack, which helps with unexpected technical problems and outages. Artificial intelligence also dominated the selection with Resistant AI coming second and Filuta AI third.

Millions for visionaries

Startup E2B aims to create tools for developers working with AI agents. The company nearly broke an earlier record when it managed to scoop up a sizable investment at quite an early stage. In fact, E2B raised 2,5 million dollars in a so-called pre-seed round.

🎭 Events we’re excited about

6 October – Scientists’ night

Let AI reward you with a smile, take a journey into a virtual world, order coffee from a robot or play student computer games. Where. In the laboratories of FIT CTU in Prague during the Night of Scientists, from 5 pm to 10 pm, free admission.

7-22 October – EU Code Week

A project that promotes creativity, problem solving and collaboration through technical activities. The aim is to make programming more visible – to show young people, adults and seniors how programming can make ideas happen.

10 October – LLM Meetup

At the Prague Fall LLM Meetup you will have the opportunity to listen to four short and insightful talks from leading representatives of generative AI. The event takes place at Apify’s offices in the heart of Prague. Book your last tickets for free.

10 October – Týden inovací

On Tuesday 10 October, the main event of the 8th edition of the Czech Innovation Week will take place at the ČSOB Campus. Speakers include Abram Maldonado, a representative of OpenAI. Domestic personalities will include Tomáš Mikolov, Stanislav Fort and Ondřej Vlček.

17 October – SH!FTS 2023

How to stay on top in times of change? And how to understand the current geopolitical risks? The SH!FTS 2023 conference is for those who want to understand the radical transformations around us. In addition to keynote speaker Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the programme will feature speakers such as Petr Baudiš and Petr Zahradník.

17 October – Career fair COFIT

A career fair will be held at the Faculty of Information Technology of CTU. You can meet global industry giants, but also interesting startups with innovative potential and an ethical approach to business. Students can also find out how to combine internships with their studies or arrange thesis topics to provide them with experience for the future.

17 October – Academic integrity in the AI era

The Hybernská Campus will host an event hosted by Charles University and Turnitin, which will open the topic of academic integrity in the emerging era of artificial intelligence. Be part of the discussion regarding the opportunities, but also the challenges that the use of AI brings to the creation of professional texts, learning outcomes and to education as a whole. The event will take place in a hybrid format.

17 October – AI Happy Hours

Attend an informal gathering of representatives of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies at CIIRC CTU and see that the road to innovation does not have to be long or thorny. Come and be inspired by concrete examples of technologies, share your experiences and consult with experts on how to mix the right innovation cocktail for your company.

17 October – AI in education

Interested in using AI in education? Attend a lecture at Palacký University in Olomouc that will focus on key information about AI and its importance in education at all types of schools.

18 October – Better Data 2023

A conference where you will learn about the latest technologies directly from the most authoritative speakers. In addition to interesting presentations, you can look forward to demos, expert tables, specialists at exhibitor booths, and more.

You can find all the events we find interesting in our Google calendar. 

🧩 Stuff that interests us

• Newsletter Progress in AI by Stanislav and Kristina Fort is back. If you are tempted to read news from the technical development of AI and the world of AI regulation, don’t hesitate to follow.

• Driving a car, controlling smart homes or security cameras… AI can do it all today. But how do we make AI safe to use? Listen to the podcast episode “Ones and Zeros” with Prof. Pavel Surynek, Ph.D., an expert on artificial intelligence in robotics and head of the Laboratory of Robotic Agents at the CTU FIT.

• Jeremy Howard, co-founder of fast.ai and creator of the ULMFiT approach on which all modern language models (LMs) are based, takes you on a comprehensive journey through the fascinating landscape of LMs in his video.

• As policymakers begin to regulate AI, it will become increasingly necessary to clearly distinguish between types of language models and recognize the unique characteristics of the underlying models that may require additional regulatory attention. For more on how they work, see the Ada Lovelace Institute article.

• JournalismAI presents the second global survey of what news organizations are doing with AI. The media landscape is undergoing a significant transformation since the spread of generative AI. Opinions fluctuate between enthusiasm for positive breakthroughs in some fields and concerns about possible deepening discrimination and social inequality in others. This research explores these concerns in more depth. 

• OpenAI is also trying to help teachers use AI in the classroom. To that end, they have published a teacher’s guide, including an explanation of how ChatGPT works, what are its limitations, and how effective AI can really be, including its biases.

Read our m<AI>m

The Czech media scene is bursting with AI-related news. Are you getting lost? Follow our media<AI>monitor. Bi-weekly, we’ll send a rundown of AI news straight to your inbox to help you drown out the buzz and stay informed. Czech only for now.

📢 Community calls

ML Prague 2024 – Call for workshops proposal

ML Prague conference invites ML, AI, and Deep Learning experts to submit their proposals. Here’s what you need to know:

• Proposals must include the title, abstract, names of the speakers and the company. 
• Prepare your content for a duration of 3 hours. 
• Content must be very hands-on and genuinely useful for advanced technical audience.
• Workshop speakers will get a free ticket for the whole conference.
• Proposals must be submitted via this form until October 10, 2023.

💼 Open job positions

Datamole

• Senior Data & AI Consultant
• Senior Full-Stack Developer

DataSentics

• Python Data Engineer
• Mechanical Engineer with Love for Coding
• Data Scientist

Ústav informatiky AV ČR

• Tenure Track Research Position – Artificial Intelligence
• Tenure Track Research Position – Computer Science

Ústav fyzikální chemie J. Heyrovského AV ČR

• Postdoctoral researcher in theoretical chemistry (ML)

Ústav molekulární genetiky AV ČR

• Postdoctoral Position in Bioinformatics (ML)

Fyzikální ústav AV ČR

• Postdoc / senior researcher in Astroparticle Physics (ML)