Exeter experts to play key role in an initiative to supercharge AI

Experts from the University of Exeter will play a pivotal role in helping put the UK at the forefront of AI advances and tackle important global challenges.

Academics from the university are set to join forces with leading mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists from across the UK key sectors, including healthcare, pandemics and the environment.

Thanks to major new funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), nine national AI research hubs will develop key research, expertise, and innovations which will make AI an even more versatile, trustworthy tool.

The University of Exeter will be part of the £12.8m “AI for Collective Intelligence (AI4CI)” hub, which will generate new AI to leverage intelligence that is distributed across populations of people and devices in order to improve both individual and collective decision making.

This already occurs naturally when people share, compare, and filter information, but new AI offers the possibility to harness this kind of collective intelligence at scale, delivering support and guidance tailored for individuals and national agencies alike.

For example, identifying trends within the experiences of diabetes patients could be used to provide bespoke anticipatory guidance direct to patients via smart agents.

AI also has capacity to assist during major threats to public health. For instance, the Hub’s Pandemic Resilience theme will reconsider the modelling and analyses undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring how new AI approaches could improve centralized policy making and empower individual decisions during a future pandemic.