The proposals should develop mechanisms to reinforce and network excellence centres in AI, bringing the best scientists from academia and industry to join forces in addressing the major AI challenges hampering its deployment; therefore, reinforcing excellence through collaboration in AI throughout Europe. Such networks are expected to mobilise researchers to collaborate on key AI research challenges and to progress faster in joined efforts rather than working in silos, leading to fragmented and duplicated efforts. Such networks, are essential to reach critical mass and overcome the present fragmentation of AI research in Europe. Proposals will bring together the best European research teams around AI to join forces and address major technical as well as sector- or societal-driven challenges in strengthening excellence, networking, multidisciplinarity and developing academia-industry synergies, as relevant.

Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:

• Technical robustness and safety, incl. methods for evaluating the resilience of systems, and standardized ways of quantifying robustness of AI
• Privacy preserving techniques and infrastructures
• Human agency and oversight in terms of system security and safety; including explainability in human-readable terms allowing to detect/prevent/mitigate/recover from harm and threats.

The proposals should:

• include mechanisms to spread the latest and most advanced knowledge to all the AI-labs in Europe
• develop synergies and cross-fertilization between industry and academia
• become a common resource and shared facility, as a virtual laboratory offering access to knowledge and expertise and attracting talents
• provide broad access to AI excellence in Europe and also play an important role in increasing visibility
• provide access to the required resources and infrastructure to support the R&D activities of the action, such as cloud and computing capacity, IoT, robotics equipment, support staff and engineers, where relevant, and the capacity to develop prototypes, pilots, demonstrators, etc.
• include a number of major scientific and application challenges which will mobilise the community to join forces in addressing them.  etc (p. 379-380 of the work programme).