The world’s leading experts in Artificial Intelligence have arrived to Slovakia as part of the Eastern European Summer School of Machine Learning. The event’s goal, which is taking place this week (July 10 – July 15, 2023) at the Technical University of Košice, is to provide access to the latest knowledge in this field to university students in the region. The Summer School is organized by scientists from DeepMind, the Google research laboratory for artificial intelligence, and ESET.

160 students from 41 countries, who have successfully passed the selection process, are now attending the Summer School. They will have the opportunity to learn from 27 top experts from 20 different institutions and companies worldwide. The lectures cover topics of Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, ethics in Machine Learning, and the application of Machine Learning in medicine and robotics.

Among the speakers, there is Yoshua Bengio, considered a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, who will talk to students about deep learning. Other speakers include Doina Precup, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and president of AI Canada, as well as globally recognized experts from Slovakia, such as Michal Valko, Jana Košecká, and Peter Richtárik.

“Artificial intelligence is a topic that resonates more and more not only within professional circles but also in society as a whole. We are delighted that Košice has become the focus of a global debate on a phenomenon that will facilitate our lives in many ways, while also bringing its challenges. The lineup of speakers shows that the Central and Eastern European region, and specifically Slovakia, has internationally respected experts in the field of IT. It is becoming more and more important that the best experts should share their experience with young talents. The summer school provides a space for such an exchange, and we believe it will contribute to shaping ideas that will help change the world for the better,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

The idea to organize a Summer School of Machine Learning was conceived by three Romanian scientific colleagues from the DeepMind laboratory for Artificial Intelligence, which is owned by Google. The first summer school was co-organized by Doina Precup, Razvan Pascanu, and Viorica Patraucean, and was held in Romania in 2018. Each year, the event is organized in a different country so that as many young people from Central and Eastern Europe as possible could have the opportunity to learn from the experts. After Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania, the Summer School has come to Slovakia for the first time.

“We focus on a high-quality program that includes world experts and a selection process that emphasizes the contribution and potential impact of the school on the participant. We were honored when ESET approached us with a partnership proposal for the 2023 event. We are very much looking forward to getting to know the Slovak AI community better and contribute on putting Slovakia on the map of international events in the field of Artificial Intelligence,” said Viorica Patraucean, one of the Summer School organizers.

In addition to ESET, the national platform for the development of artificial intelligence, AI Slovakia and the Technical University of Košice are partners of this year’s event. The University´s Department of Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence is an academic partner of the event; it has many years of experience on education and research, and was the first in Slovakia to enable its students to study Artificial Intelligence.