European researcher’s night 2024
FORGING participated in this year’s activities of the European Researchers’ Night in Braga – Portugal, showcasing our commitment to civic society engagement. The event is an annual celebration dedicated to promoting the importance of research and engaging the public with scientific knowledge. The initiative attracted 1400 enthusiastic visitors in Braga alone, while taking place across 25 European countries and more than 50 cities, highlighting the widespread impact of scientific exploration.
Partnering up with the insightful project FRONTSH1P, our team had the privilege of being featured at the EU Corner, a dedicated section highlighting projects funded by the European Union.
Integrating SSH aspects in Horizon Europe projects
On 15 May 2024, APRE participated in the online event ‘Unlocking the potential of the SSH in the Horizon Europe projects‘ presenting FORGING. The event, organised by NCP4Industry together with Net4Society, was a valuable opportunity to discuss the relevance of integrating Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) into Horizon Europe Cluster 4 proposals and projects.
During the event, a roundtable addressed key questions about integrating SSH into CL4 projects such as challenges related to differing terminologies and methodologies between SSH and STEM disciplines, with solutions involving facilitating mutual understanding. It has been noted that the Horizon Europe framework can be adjusted to encourage and foster SSH integration by providing guidelines and incentives, increasing funding for interdisciplinary projects, and involving SSH experts in the review process. By addressing societal and environmental implications through collaborative development, FORGING aims to ensure that emerging technologies contribute positively to the digital and green transitions, aligning with broader societal values and priorities.
Rome Future Week 2024
APRE took part in Rome Future Week 2024, the series of events spread across the metropolitan city of Rome, with the aim of promoting innovation, knowledge and creativity. FORGING results were presented in relation to its support of digital and green transitions by ensuring that emerging technologies like 6G incorporate environmental and social considerations into their development. FORGING emphasizes key societal and ecological criteria such as inclusivity, transparency, energy efficiency, and circular design. These themes align with the broader goals of fostering a sustainable and ethically responsible use for 6G networks. Participants were also engaged in an interactive session aimed at exploring social desirability of possible 6G applications.
Read more about this event with the short interview of APRE: HERE.
Event hosted by the MWC Barcelona
In early July, INL – International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory took FORGING to Barcelona together with other EU Projects hosted by MWC Barcelona to exchange best practice on project management, stakeholder management and development of post-project plans including exploitation of project key assets.
Stakeholder session during FORGING General Assembly
The FORGING consortium met in Sophia Antipolis in France in the 3rd-4th of October, and local stakeholders were invited to join for a dissemination and consultation session during the meeting.
Seven representatives from local companies and associations joined the consortium for the final hours of the General Assembly. In the session, the local stakeholders were introduced to the Value Sensitive Innovation Journey and the Toolbox Prototype. The multistakeholder co-creation approach to responsible technology development utilised in FORGING was introduced with example tools and methodologies used during the project. Most importantly, the stakeholders were invited to reflect upon existing practices of responsible technology development and implementation. The discussions proved to be rich and fruitful, as the different backgrounds of participants brought up different perspectives on responsible technology practices.
The participants expressed their interest in the framework and tools, as they viewed them to offer a novel approach to engaging with their clients and other key stakeholders in promoting responsible technology development. When further developing the Toolbox, the inputs from our stakeholders will be an invaluable help in building relevant tools for different actors.
Open Living Labs Days 2024
At the 2024 Open Living Labs Day Congress, in Timisoara, Romania, from 25 to 27 September 2024, i2CAT Foundation, FORGING partner, participated in two key sessions, emphasizing the need to assess societal and environmental impacts of technologies: “Challenges are common and global: the vital role of living labs in an inclusive and participatory approach in the UN 2.0” and “Driving innovation: the role of living labs in supporting SMEs through test-before invets strategies“. i2CAT’s involvement emphasized the real societal impact of technology and the importance of socially responsible innovation.
FORGING at 1st SMASHing workshop
Early October 2024, Brigita Jurisic from INL took FORGING to 1st SMASHing workshop held in Vipava, Slovenia with a lecture on social and environmental value assessment of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning technologies.
Emerging enabling technologies such as AI & ML generate new challenges for which we have no established and accepted ethical standards and no metrics for assessing their impact on the environment and society. At early stages of research, the assessment of the potential impacts is challenging as we are often far from the understanding of the use cases of the technologies being developed.
The history is full of examples of new technologies being deployed before we fully comprehend how they will affect our physical and mental well-being and the society in which we live. A call for more collaboration between social sciences, humanities and arts with the STAM researchers was made to enable development of new normative ethical standards. FORGING´s co-creative and multi-disciplinary and multi-sectorial approach was highlighted as a good practice in conducting responsible research. A review of major ethical concerns regarding the use of AI & ML technologies was done to ignite the researchers in thinking of the potential unintended consequences of the systems developed, once deployed and in use.
The workshop brought together 78 international researchers and experts, working on cutting-edge AI and machine learning applications across sciences and the humanities. Participants came from 16 European countries (Slovenia, Germany, Austria, France, UK, Spain, Greece, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Netherlands, Switzerland, Estonia, Portugal) as well as the USA, Pakistan, and India. The workshop coincided with the awarding of two Nobel Prizes for the first time in artificial intelligence and machine learning—fields that are at the heart of the SMASH project and were thoroughly explored in our discussions. We also had lecturers from institutions associated with the Nobel laureates, including DeepMind and the University of Washington.
As a part of this innovative, intersectoral, career-development training program was also a public round table discussion on the Impact of AI on Science and Society.
The panel was composed of:
▪️ Vida Groznik, PhD (CEO and co-founder at NEUS diagnostics and Assistant Professor at Un. of Ljubljana, FRI)
▪️ Brigita Jurisic (Business and Strategic Relations Officer, INL, Portugal)
▪️ Uroš Seljak, PhD (Cosmologist, Professor at UC Berkeley)
▪️ Tanja Samardžić, PhD (Linguist, Professor at Un. of Zurich)
▪️ Nenad Tomašev, PhD (Staff Reserach Scientist at DeepMind)
For more information check the programme website https://smash.ung.si.