Kustec discusses research, AI, digitalisation with Vestager

Ljubljana – Education Minister Simona Kustec and Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Margrethe Vestager discussed via video call on Monday Slovenia’s EU presidency agenda in digitalisation and artificial intelligence. The pair agreed that people must come first, and that AI and digitalisation must serve the society.

The pair stressed the importance of the UNESCO-sponsored International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), which was established in Ljubljana in October 2020.

The centre is ready for more active cooperation with the European Union and Kustec presented to Vestager Slovenia’s proposals in areas such as platform development, training in AI and many others, the Education Ministry said in a press release.

The minister also presented the programme of Slovenia’s presidency of the EU Council in science and research.

Slovenia will address a new aspect of managing the EU research area that she believes would bring more synergies between research and education, and the economy.

Next to the economic aspect she also stressed the importance of research for the solving of broader social issues, excellence, inclusion, connectivity and international cooperation.

Vestager agreed and proposed a platform for innovation and research. She said the significance of this was reflected in the European Commission’s approach to trust-worthy AI, where a special emphasis is placed on showing the benefits of AI for all aspects of society and for people’s lives.

Kustec and Vestager will take part in Maribor on Tuesday in the official opening of the supercomputer Vega, the first out of five planned supercomputers in Europe that is to encourage open science and support the development of leading applications in science, public administration and industry in many fields, especially machine learning, AI and high capacity data analysis.

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