Five Dutch companies to further boost Artificial Intelligence in the Netherlands
10 Octobre 2019 - 07:00AM
Ahold Delhaize, ING, KLM, NS and Philips announce
Kickstart AI, a combination of actions to fuel AI education, talent
and innovation in the Netherlands.
Zaandam, the Netherlands, October 10, 2019 –
Five Dutch companies Ahold Delhaize, ING, KLM, NS and Philips aim
to further boost the AI ecosystem in the Netherlands by
accelerating and promoting the development of AI technology and
nurturing AI talent in the country. This effort will add
educational capacity, foster the development of the AI community in
the Netherlands and reiterate the position of the Netherlands as a
competitive and relevant global AI hub.
The goal of Kickstart AI, is to bridge the AI gap between the
Netherlands and other countries, like the UK, the US and China,
that have made notable progress in this area. In order to keep the
country’s position as a pioneer and inventor of technologies, the
Dutch government, companies, organizations and universities have
ground to cover in terms of structural investments and availability
of global AI talent. The five companies “kickstarting” AI are, for
the first time, uniting forces in this kind of joint initiative and
taking highly needed decisive action.
The five companies initiating Kickstart AI are calling for the
critical expansion of local knowledge and talent in order to
ethically implement AI that is focused not only on what is
technically possible but also meeting the ethical and social
standards the Dutch society may expect. Collaboration among these
five companies, the government, industry and other tech providers
will help address societal challenges, provide new opportunities
for the youth and accelerate the introduction of AI in the
Netherlands. For consumers, AI has untapped potential to help
improve their daily lives by elevating their experience with
personalized service, convenience and choices in many areas of life
such as food, travel, health and finances.
Initiatives under Kickstart AI include:
- AI superchallenges: Competitions aimed at
raising the Netherlands’ global profile by mobilizing global AI
talent to address societal challenges for example in the areas of
health and mobility.
- Joint appointments: Investing in
private-public collaboration through joint appointments of academic
staff, providing access for the next generation of AI talent to
education, training and leading academics. First commitment is to
create 5 joint appointments to academic institutions in the
Netherlands by each of the frontrunner companies in Kickstart AI,
adding up to 25 positions in total.
- Dutch national course for AI: As part of a
wider effort to increase understanding and adoption of AI in the
Netherlands, Kickstart AI companies will not only promote the
national course for AI among the general public and their own
workforces, but also offer the course in English, therewith aiming
to secure sign-ups from a total of 170,000 people in the
Netherlands by the end of 2020.
Introducing Kickstart AI at the World Summit AI today, Maarten
de Rijke, Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Director of
the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence, said: “The
Netherlands has always been a technology pioneer, a frontrunner in
AI development and innovation. The quality of our AI specialists is
well-acknowledged worldwide. However, without a national AI
strategy and swift action, the severe shortage of AI talent in our
country remains one of the biggest roadblocks to realizing the full
potential of AI talent and technology. The joint efforts between
universities and companies, as part of Kickstart AI, underlines the
urgency in accelerating AI education and talent retention and
signals our commitment to collaboration and investments needed to
accelerate AI innovation in the Netherlands.”
Ahold Delhaize, ING, KLM, NS and Philips are connected to the
daily lives of millions of people through food, travel, health and
finances. As organizations that are close to the lives of everyday
Dutch society, they fully understand the game-changing potential
for AI to improve everyday life in the Netherlands. This is why
they have joined together in a call for action to their business
and industry peers, to boost collaboration in creating a thriving
AI ecosystem in the Netherlands for the benefit of end-consumers’
daily lives. The Strategic Action Plan AI (SAPAI) and the
Netherlands’ AI Coalition, also announced this week, are
complementary steps in the same direction and designed to
collectively sustain the growth and competitiveness of the Dutch
economy.
NOTES TO EDITORS
AI innovation projects currently underway at five
partner companies
- Ahold Delhaize – Customer interaction and
conversational intelligence
Addresses developments in the field of digital Customer
Interaction, especially in the field of conversational technologies
such as search, chatbots or multimodal interactions relying on
federated search.
- ING – AI for Know Your Customer
Operations
Protecting the consumers, business and the society against
financial crime is at the core of ING’s business. Deploying smarter
mechanisms by using advanced analytics techniques and AI is
therefore of crucial importance.
- KLM - Integrated Optimization of Airline
Operations
In an increasingly complex and busy environment, the reliability
of an airline’s operations is a growing competitive advantage.
Advanced machine learning prediction tools will enable control on
costs, operational performance, customer satisfaction and employee
engagement.
- NS – Predictive Maintenance
Safe and reliable service of the railway network is increasingly
important, in particular in a time where transportation is
undergoing a paradigm shift to “zero emission.”
- Philips – Artificial Intelligence in consumer
health and professional healthcare
Philips combines the power of AI and other technologies with
clinical and operational domain knowledge to help its customers
deliver on the quadruple aim in healthcare of improved patient
experience, better health outcomes, improved staff experience, and
lower cost of care. Philips’ products and solutions enhance
healthcare providers, adapt to the context and they are seamlessly
integrated in their workflows.
Dutch AI facts and figures
- The five Kickstart AI companies reach millions of customers in
the Netherlands each week:
- Ahold Delhaize employs around 100.000 employees in the
Netherlands, through its Albert Heijn, Etos, Gall & Gall, and
bol.com brands. Together these brands serve around 13 million
consumers per week
- ING employs over 13.800 employees in the Netherlands. ING’s
customers are increasingly digital. ING has more than 38 million
customers in 13 retail markets which results in 3 billion contact
moments a year.
- KLM employs over 26.800 employees in the Netherlands
- NS employs over 21.000 employees and serves 1.3 million
passengers per day in the Netherlands.
- Philips employs around 11.600 employees in the Netherlands and
improves the lives of 27 million people a year in the Benelux.
- The National AI Course was launched on 21 December 2018 and to
date more than 42.000 people have taken the AI course.
- A recent report indicates that 340 PhD AI researchers work in
the Netherlands, with 57 of them having presented at AI conferences
versus the US with 9,010 researchers of which 3,017 are presented
(Source: Global AI Talent Pool Report 2018).
- In 2018, 309 Dutch AI startups received €102M in investments
compared to 1,052 AI startups in the UK with €1.2Bn investments. Of
these investments into Dutch startups, 20% came from Dutch
investors.
- With 309 AI startups, the Netherlands is home to 3% of the
total number of AI startups worldwide. However, the Netherlands
invests only 1% of the global total in AI, in comparison to 48% of
China’s investment (Source: StartupDelta 2018).
Media contacts
https://www.aholddelhaize.com/en/media/https://www.ing.com/Newsroom/Media-relations-contacts.htmhttps://news.klm.com/https://nieuws.ns.nl/https://www.philips.com/content/corporate/en_AA/about/news/contacts.html/
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