Czech Republic–United States Workshop on Artificial Intelligence held at UMD

The Czech Republic–United States Workshop on Artificial Intelligence was held Sept. 18–19 at the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md.

The workshop was sponsored by the Institute for Systems Research, the University of Maryland, the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Global Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic.

ISR Director William Regli and Michal Pechoucek of the Czech Technical University in Prague (ČVUT) were the program chairs. Organizers were Luděk Moravec of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington, D.C., and Stephen O’Regan of the Office of Naval Research Global at the U.S. Embassy in Prague (ONR Global Prague).

The international, invited workshop explored topics in artificial intelligence for robotics, transportation, and cybersecurity. More than 80 experts from academia, industry, government labs and funding agencies participated. United States and Czech Republic speakers and participants described current capabilities; projected how AI could address the long-term needs of society, government, and industry in both countries; and identified topics and funding mechanisms for near-term bilateral projects in an effort to enhance collaborations.

Keynote speakers were Jason Matheny, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA); Subbarao Kambhampati, Arizona State University (ASU) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI); and Petr Somol, Czech Academy of Sciences (ČAS).

Topics included AI and cybersecurity; AI futures, limits and applications; policy and legal implications of AI, perception and acting; assured and trusted autonomy; human and machine symbiosis; and international collaboration opportunities and mechanics.

Participants identified Czech technologies of promise for insertion into U.S. systems; exchange opportunities for U.S. and Czech scientists, faculty and students; potential institutional partnerships; new and emerging science and engineering challenges of shared interest; and follow-up activities and events to enhance international collaboration.

Workshop participants came from many organizations in both the Czech Republic and the United States. Czech institutions included ČAS, ČVUT, the Czech Institute of Informatics at ČVUT, Charles University, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Czech Republic, Masaryk University, CISCO, GoodAI, Rossum.AI, AgentFly Technologies, AVAST, Lidove Noviny and BlindSpot.AI.

United States participation came from the University of Maryland, the Center for New American Security, the National Science Foundation, IARPA, the University at Buffalo, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, ARO, ONR, ONR Global Prague, Fraunhofer USA, the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the University of Pennsylvania, the Center for New American Security, ASU, AAAI, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Published September 19, 2018