The FBK Digital Society Center’s strategy on Artificial Intelligence focuses on the following two aspects:

• Social and Cooperative AI – Currently, Artificial Intelligence, and especially “deep learning,” is characterized by a poor ability to model social behaviors and an approach primarily based on methodological individualism in which individual “artificial agents” perceive and interact with non-social environments. Our strategy in this area is to develop Artificial Intelligence algorithms capable of perceiving, recognizing and modeling social behaviors and interactions so as to produce cooperative intelligence and integrate effectively into society.

• Distributed Intelligence (“Intelligence at the Edge”) – The digital society is increasingly dependent on the ability to process data efficiently and effectively; the enormous computing power available in the Cloud and in “High Performance Computing” infrastructures is certainly a key support; however, there is a strong demand to move intelligence closer to where it is needed: it is predicted that, in the next 5 years, 80% of data processing activities will come out of the Cloud and take place at the “edge.” This evolution is important to reduce latency and reaction times, better distribute computational and connectivity loads (and costs), and reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint. Distributed intelligence also poses new challenges – but also new opportunities – for ethical and privacy-friendly Artificial Intelligence.