• Tech News
    • Games
    • Pc & Laptop
    • Mobile Tech
    • Ar & Vr
    • Security
  • Startup
    • Fintech
  • Reviews
  • How To
What's Hot

Elementor #32036

January 24, 2025

The Redmi Note 13 is a bigger downgrade compared to the 5G model than you might think

April 18, 2024

Xiaomi Redmi Watch 4 is a budget smartwatch with a premium look and feel

April 16, 2024
Facebook Twitter Instagram
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest VKontakte
Behind The ScreenBehind The Screen
  • Tech News
    1. Games
    2. Pc & Laptop
    3. Mobile Tech
    4. Ar & Vr
    5. Security
    6. View All

    Bring Elden Ring to the table with the upcoming board game adaptation

    September 19, 2022

    ONI: Road to be the Mightiest Oni reveals its opening movie

    September 19, 2022

    GTA 6 images and footage allegedly leak

    September 19, 2022

    Wild west adventure Card Cowboy turns cards into weird and silly stories

    September 18, 2022

    7 Reasons Why You Should Study PHP Programming Language

    October 19, 2022

    Logitech MX Master 3S and MX Keys Combo for Business Gen 2 Review

    October 9, 2022

    Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen10 Review

    September 18, 2022

    Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Chromebook, 16-inch+120Hz

    September 3, 2022

    It’s 2023 and Spotify Still Can’t Say When AirPlay 2 Support Will Arrive

    April 4, 2023

    YouTube adds very convenient iPhone homescreen widgets

    October 15, 2022

    Google finishes iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets rollout w/ Maps

    October 14, 2022

    Is Apple actually turning iMessage into AIM or is this sketchy redesign rumor for laughs?

    October 14, 2022

    MeetKai launches AI-powered metaverse, starting with a billboard in Times Square

    August 10, 2022

    The DeanBeat: RP1 simulates putting 4,000 people together in a single metaverse plaza

    August 10, 2022

    Improving the customer experience with virtual and augmented reality

    August 10, 2022

    Why the metaverse won’t fall to Clubhouse’s fate

    August 10, 2022

    How Apple privacy changes have forced social media marketing to evolve

    October 16, 2022

    Microsoft Patch Tuesday October Fixed 85 Vulnerabilities – Latest Hacking News

    October 16, 2022

    Decentralization and KYC compliance: Critical concepts in sovereign policy

    October 15, 2022

    What Thoma Bravo’s latest acquisition reveals about identity management

    October 14, 2022

    What is a Service Robot? The vision of an intelligent service application is possible.

    November 7, 2022

    Tom Brady just chucked another Microsoft Surface tablet

    September 18, 2022

    The best AIO coolers for your PC in 2022

    September 18, 2022

    YC’s Michael Seibel clarifies some misconceptions about the accelerator • DailyTech

    September 18, 2022
  • Startup
    • Fintech
  • Reviews
  • How To
Behind The ScreenBehind The Screen
Home»Tech News»AI Sweden connects the dots to keep the country competitive
Tech News

AI Sweden connects the dots to keep the country competitive

September 13, 2022No Comments10 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
AI Sweden connects the dots to keep the country competitive
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

With world-class research institutes in artificial intelligence (AI), Sweden keeps up with all the latest ideas – and sometimes even steps out ahead. But blue-sky research doesn’t always lead to practical solutions that can be used by industry. That’s where AI Sweden plays a key role. 

An important first step in the development of AI Sweden came when Mikael Ljungblom was working as a political advisor to the Swedish minister for digital development. While travelling to see what other countries were doing, Ljungblom and his colleagues saw that countries such as Japan and China were investing in AI. Given the importance of the technology for competitiveness and societal development, they sensed a need to develop an AI centre in Sweden. That was in 2017.

“I started to speak to different actors in the ecosystem and I met Mats Nordlund, who is now our colleague,” Ljungblom tells Computer Weekly. “He was working in the automotive industry in Gothenburg – and he had the same mission as I did. We locked arms and tried to go about this together. We had great support from Vinnova, which is Sweden’s innovation agency.”

Vinnova provided the base funding for what was to become AI Sweden. Johanna Bergman joined the effort in 2018. She had previously been working on pre-hospital e-health at the Lindholme Science Park in Gothenburg. 

“We got this assignment to set up an AI centre in Sweden,” says Bergman. “We started by doing a feasibility study – by soliciting ideas from all actors we could think of. We talked to Swedish industry, with government authorities, municipalities, regions, academia and some international actors, trying to understand what this should be. It was clear we should work on applied AI, not fundamental research. Our assignment was to accelerate applied AI in Sweden.

“In February 2019, we inaugurated the centre, which we called AI Sweden. Partners of all sorts were involved – from startups to corporations, academia to public sector. It was important to have this spread from the beginning.”

Ljungblom is now head of communications and public affairs at AI Sweden. Johanna Bergman is now head of strategic initiatives. She was recently recognised for her achievements by being listed in the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Science & Healthcare in Europe. 

“After the inauguration, we immediately started up collaborative AI projects – cross-sector and involving different kinds of organisations – to work on real AI problems,” Bergman tells Computer Weekly. “That has evolved into what we do today. Lindholme Science Park helped us a lot in the beginning and is today one of our host organisations.” 

Advantages of a horizontal approach 

The fact that AI Sweden operates across sectors makes it different from most AI research centres in other countries. Instead of taking a vertical approach by focusing on one or two industries, AI Sweden has identified a few areas that are important across several sectors. 

One such area is edge learning, which is a new paradigm in AI where learning occurs closer to the source of the training data. The models that are built from the learning process on the edge are then aggregated in a central location where they are shared. The data itself is never transferred to the central location, which has the desirable side effect of helping to ensure data privacy. 

“After the inauguration, we immediately started up collaborative AI projects to work on real AI problems. That has evolved into what we do today” 

Johanna Bergman, AI Sweden

This is different from traditional machine learning (ML), where the training is centralised and uses a centralised dataset. AI Sweden has set up an Edge Learning Lab, knowing that partners from different sectors – such as automotive, healthcare and the public sector – need to work with the new paradigm.  

The Edge Learning Lab includes a test platform, along with shared resources for developers, data scientists, students and researchers to learn more about various aspects of edge learning. AI Sweden and partners Zenseact, HPE, Volvo Cars and Ericsson launched the lab in Gothenburg on 27 April 2022. The lab will help different people and organisations quickly build a work environment for experiments. 

Another horizontal area of focus is the Swedish language. None of the global tech actors care about developing models for a language like Swedish, so AI Sweden decided to take that up itself.

“What we see now are major advancements in the field of language technology and what we call foundational models – huge models that understand natural language and that can generate language,” says Bergman. “Almost every week, some organisation somewhere in the world releases a new language model – these are big language models that can generate text from images and images from text, for example. While we see major advancements with English models, not much work is being done for smaller languages like Swedish.” 

To help fill this gap, AI Sweden set up several projects addressing language models for Swedish. Not only is the language lab helping Swedish companies, but it serves as an example for other cultures whose languages are not yet represented in AI models. 

The aim of the different projects is to develop a national knowledge hub on natural language understanding (NLU) to help stimulate NLU work on Swedish. AI Sweden addresses language model training, evaluation and deployment. It also works on ethical and security aspects in several ongoing projects around NLU. Swedish authorities and public sector organisations are the main stakeholders and will be able to use the models to summarise texts, and for translation and writing support, among other things.

In addition to edge learning and Swedish natural language processing, AI Sweden also works on a few other horizontal topics, but has not yet set up programmes for them. These include privacy-preserving AI, complex systems, and management and logistics planning. The idea is to find the areas that are relevant for many different sectors.

Networking and collaboration to synergies

“Networking and collaboration are an important part of what we do at AI Sweden,” Ljungblom tells Computer Weekly. “We try to connect people who might have common interests without knowing it. Our horizontal approach allows us to come up with completely new – and sometimes surprising – collaborations.”

One of the more surprising synergies is that some hospitals use models developed by the automotive industry for self-driving cars. They use these same models and techniques to predict how the hospital will function.  

Another unexpected collaboration is between the automotive industry and university researchers studying bird behaviour. The automotive industry is using a dataset developed by researchers to categorise behaviour of Baltic Sea birds. This dataset is useful for the automotive industry as a proxy dataset for collaborative projects on self-driving.  

“Networking and collaboration are an important part of what we do at AI Sweden. We try to connect people who might have common interests without knowing it. Our horizontal approach allows us to come up with completely new – and sometimes surprising – collaborations”

Mikael Ljungblom, AI Sweden

The approach of AI Sweden is to either take what is already happening in pure research and apply it to industry or take what already works in one domain and apply it to another. Not only is this beneficial for society, but it also helps Swedish organisations remain competitive on a global level. By helping Swedish organisations overcome some of the common challenges, AI Sweden accelerates the use of artificial intelligence and helps companies get ahead of the curve on AI adoption. 

Talent development and networking 

When AI Sweden was founded, it wasn’t obvious that it could play a role in helping develop the right AI talent in Sweden. But as it began networking with actors in different industries, it became clear that AI Sweden was uniquely positioned to spot what talents were needed and to develop consolidated programmes that would help develop those skills. 

Just last year, AI Sweden started a set of talent programmes. These aim not only to develop specific talents, but also to help develop the right company cultures for AI. 

AI Sweden also tries to connect the dots and get the different parts of the ecosystem to work together. One of its aims is to make sure government investment is being spent in the best possible way. It does this by staying abreast of who is working on what and finding synergies to make the most of the funds. 

Another way AI Sweden is helping accelerate adoption of AI is by addressing societal challenges. AI changes the way people work and will probably transform industries. 

To help prepare organisations for the big changes, AI Sweden works with partners to make sure they take steps towards becoming more AI mature. As individual organisations become more mature in applying AI, the entire ecosystem benefits. 

“We’ve found a structured way of doing this,” says Ljungblom. “We use an AI maturity assessment tool that we adapted from the Initiative for Applied Artificial Intelligence in Germany. It’s a great tool that applies a structured approach for benchmarking improvements and identifying what areas to focus on when working with AI. This allows organisations to take the work they are doing to the next level.” 

National advantages of Sweden 

“Finland was quite early in making AI a strategic priority,” says Bergman. “We can gain a lot from collaborating in the Nordics. For example, several Nordic countries have very similar languages, so when it comes to language applications, there is great potential for working together. That’s starting to happen.” 

Ljungblom points out that an interesting thing about Sweden is its decentralised government structure, with autonomous regions and municipalities. “Hence, we are forced to find effective ways of working with a lot of different public entities,” he says. “If we compare the EU to the US and China, we are much more diverse and decentralised, with 27 different member states. In a way, this resembles the autonomous structure of Sweden, so we might have something to offer there.” 

Two aspects of Swedish culture give it a competitive advantage in AI. One is that it has always been a technologically friendly country, with a population that is quick to become digital and to use digital tools. It also has a good entrepreneurial system with a good ecosystem of startups. At the same time, there are a lot of very large Swedish companies, such as Ericsson, Saab and Ikea, and these companies tend to keep up with technological advances.

The other advantage is that Swedish people are used to collaborating. It’s part of their culture. In technology, they collaborate across sectors – and between industry and academia. This mindset helps with AI, where an ecosystem is needed and where many of the building blocks can be shared across several application domains.

AI Sweden relies on this pervasive attitude of cooperation to help connect the dots.

Source link

See also  National and regional VC numbers show Seattle faring better than the rest of the country ... so far – Startup
competitive connects country dots Sweden
Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Related Posts

What is a Service Robot? The vision of an intelligent service application is possible.

November 7, 2022

Tom Brady just chucked another Microsoft Surface tablet

September 18, 2022

The best AIO coolers for your PC in 2022

September 18, 2022

YC’s Michael Seibel clarifies some misconceptions about the accelerator • DailyTech

September 18, 2022
Add A Comment

Comments are closed.

Editors Picks

Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy backs Terabase’s robot-built solar farms – DailyTech

August 4, 2022

ADS-B Exchange, the Flight Tracker That Powered @ElonJet, Sold to Jetnet

January 29, 2023

Misplaced Ark Spells in Spades patch provides Arcanist, reduces honing prices, and extra

July 25, 2022

Post Malone to Hold ‘Twelve Carat Toothache’ Concert in VR Next Week – Road to VR

July 8, 2022

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest news and Updates from Behind The Scene about Tech, Startup and more.

Top Post

Elementor #32036

The Redmi Note 13 is a bigger downgrade compared to the 5G model than you might think

Xiaomi Redmi Watch 4 is a budget smartwatch with a premium look and feel

Behind The Screen
Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest Vimeo YouTube
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© 2025 behindthescreen.uk - All rights reserved.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.