Bilateral AI: New FWF Cluster of Excellence

Bilateral Artificial Intelligence

The clusters of excellence are part of the Austrian Science Fund FWF's “excellent=Austria” campaign, which aims to strengthen Austria's position as a center of excellence in research. They combine research, education, and the promotion of young talent. In the first funding round at the beginning of 2023, three clusters involving ISTA were selected—in the fields of quantum sciences, energy storage, and microbiomes.

Two further project proposals have now been approved, including a cooperative research project with ISTA scientists. It deals with a fundamental and far-reaching topic: the next stage in the development of artificial intelligence. The cluster will receive €33 million in funding over a period of five years, 60 percent of which will be paid by the FWF. An extension to 10 years with a total of €70 million is possible.

The next stage of AI: Bilateral artificial intelligence

The FWF Cluster of Excellence “Bilateral AI” combines two of the most important strands of research in the field of artificial intelligence: subsymbolic AI (machine learning) and symbolic AI (knowledge representation and reasoning). Both types of AI have different strengths—and weaknesses—but have been developed largely separately from each other until now. The next generation of AI systems with better and more general problem-solving abilities requires the combination of both types. This integration, known as bilateral AI, is intended to reflect something that humans do naturally: the simultaneous use of cognitive and logical abilities.

Christoph Lampert, representative of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) on the board of the Bilateral AI Cluster: "With our four participating research groups, we already have a mix of research on symbolic and sub-symbolic AI at ISTA, and we are delighted to be able to further expand this network in the cluster together with other top researchers here in Austria. This is also an important addition to the European network within ELLIS." Under the name European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), research institutions from the EU are working together on the further development of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The FWF cluster represents another strong research network in this field.

Lampert: "Together, we can help shape the next stage of AI development: artificial intelligence that is no longer just a useful specialist, but a generalist that can adapt flexibly to different situations. This should also be accompanied by greater reliability of AI—the necessary basis for greater public confidence in this technology. People understandably want AI that does not hallucinate and whose decisions are comprehensible and reliable. Together with our partner institutions, my colleagues at ISTA and I want to contribute to this."

Six Austrian research institutions

Sepp Hochreiter from Johannes Kepler University Linz is the cluster's research director. Research groups from Vienna University of Technology, the University of Klagenfurt, Graz University of Technology, Vienna University of Economics and Business, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) are also involved. On the ISTA side, the four research groups led by Dan Alistarh, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Christoph Lampert, and Marco Mondelli are involved in the collaboration.