CiTIUS organises ECAI 2024, the event set to transform Santiago de Compostela into the world capital for excellence in artificial intelligence

CiTIUS, a member of the CIGUS Network, an initiative launched by the regional government (Xunta de Galicia) that groups together centres of accredited scientific excellence, is organizing the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024), which will take place from October 19 to 24 in Santiago de Compostela. The event will attract over 1,600 participants, representing the global elite in artificial intelligence (AI) research, who will be discussing the latest advancements in the field and addressing the key challenges AI will face in the coming years, in areas such as regulation, ethical responsibility, economic impact, and contributions to solving humankind’s principal problems.

The conference, sponsored by the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) and the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA), will feature a comprehensive programme including presentations of the latest scientific findings, keynote speeches, panel discussions, workshops, and demonstrations, all highlighting AI’s contributions to the development of society.

Under the slogan ‘Celebrating the Past Inspiring the future’, ECAI 2024 marks the 50^th anniversary of the first European AI conference, held in Brighton in 1974. According to Senén Barro, Director of CiTIUS and Chair of the Organizing Committee, “This is about recognizing decades of research in artificial intelligence to which Europe has contributed significantly, especially through public funding, which has been indispensable to achieving today’s growing impact that affects all aspects of our personal and professional lives.”

The official opening by the President of Galicia’s autonomous government, Alfonso Rueda, will be followed by a keynote speech from Professor Iryna Gurevych (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany) on ‘Fact Verification in the Real World with Large Language Models’.

In turn, researcher Iolanda Leite (Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Sweden) will present her study on how intelligent robotic systems learn to accurately interpret human intentions, informed by human knowledge, and how they address the challenge of over-reliance on human feedback.

ECAI 2024 will also place focus on the economic impact of AI, exploring both its threats and opportunities through multiple formats. At one of the panels, Jeremy Rollison, Director of EU Government Affairs at Microsoft Corporation, David H. Autor, a professor in the Department of Economics at MIT, and Raquel Jorge, a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, will discuss the current and expected impact of AI on the global economy, as well as the extent to which predictions can be made, aspects which are constantly changing due to AI’s rapid evolution.    

A further aspect of ECAI 2024 is AI regulation and a look back at AI’s 50-year history in Europe. Beyond the scientific debate, activities at ECAI 2024 will include 44 demonstrations of innovative projects, held between 21^st and 23^rd October at Santiago’s Conference Centre, the event’s main venue. The presentations will include a system capable of displaying emotions to enhance empathy, robots that can make critical real-time decisions, and defence methods against AI systems designed to manipulate human behaviour.

ECAI 2024 is set to be a record-breaking event, in terms of the number of presentations—more than 500—as well as the number of attendees and the significance of its content. Without a doubt, Santiago de Compostela will be the world capital of artificial intelligence during the week of 19^th to 24^th October.