With a little over a month left in 2023, we’re excited to share this year’s last newsletter! 2023 was an exciting year for us – one of milestones and successes for language technology in Europe, starting with the launch of the European Language Data Space back in January, META-FORUM 2023 in June, the publication of the ELE Book, and the end of the ELE 2 project. 

It also marked a significant change in the global AI landscape, with generative AI entering the mainstream, bringing incredible potential for communication, productivity, and content curation while at the same time raising questions about potential dangers and a need for future regulation. At the centre of our attention was the European AI Act, the developments of which are likely going to carry over into 2024. The final news section of the year reflects these growing concerns regarding the risks of AI both in Europe and around the globe and underlines the need for transparency and safety in language technology and AI tools.

On top of the latest AI and LT news, we want to introduce DataBri-X, an exciting project aimed at improving data use and sharing across Europe, bringing together European organisations to ultimately create a toolbox of resources and methods for handling information stored in data spaces.

The ELG Resource of the Month section presents a Python toolbox for the generation, management, processing and analysis of a collection of graphs.

With best regards

At the end of October, the European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF) 2023 was held in Valencia, Spain, at the Feria Valencia congress centre. The event attracted more than 600 visitors and featured 200 speakers in over 50 sessions. It brought together industry professionals, business developers, researchers and policymakers from all over Europe and other regions of the world to advance policy actions, industrial and research activities in the areas of Data and AI.

The LDS (Language Data Space) project booth in the event expo allowed for informative discussions and interactions with numerous attendees about the LDS project, its status and future plans. The LDS consortium was especially pleased to welcome Carme Artigas, the Secretary of State for Digitisation and Artificial Intelligence of the Spanish government at its booth. Ms Artigas is an expert in the field and sits on numerous committees that focus on data-driven technologies. Her interest in the LDS is therefore of particular relevance to the initiative.

The LDS consortium partners will continue to engage with industry leaders and promote the Language Data Space and its activities at a series of industry trade fairs and conferences across Europe.

Want to stay informed about these and other developments? Make sure to subscribe to the European Language Data Space newsletter today to keep up with the latest trends in language data innovation!

• “EU may fail to pass its AI Act in 2023” – The Verge, 23 October 2023

• “AI risk must be treated as seriously as climate crisis, says Google DeepMind chief” – The Guardian, 24 October 2023

• “MIT, Cohere for AI, others launch platform to track and filter audited AI datasets” – VentureBeat, 25 October 2023

• “OpenAI forms new team to assess ‘catastrophic risks’ of AI” – The Verge, 26 October 2023

• “‘EU’s AI act could kill our company,’ says Mistral’s Cédric O” – Sifted, 27 October 2023

• “OpenAI, Google and a ‘digital anthropologist’: the UN forms a high-level board to explore AI governance” – TechCrunch, 27 October 2023

• “G7 introduces voluntary AI code of conduct” – VentureBeat, 30 October 2023

• “White House Executive Order on AI Provides Guidelines for AI Privacy and Safety” – TechRepublic, 30 October 2023

• “South Korea and France to host next two AI Safety Summits” – Reuters, 1 November 2023

• “UK AI Safety Summit: Global Powers Make ‘Landmark’ Pledge to AI Safety” – TechRepublic, 2 November 2023

• “AI Needs Rules, but Who Will Get to Make Them?” – Scientific American, 3 November 2023

• “Netherlands building own version of ChatGPT amid quest for safer AI” – TNW, 6 November 2023

• “Aleph Alpha raises more than $500 million in Series B financing round” – The Decoder, 6 November 2023

• “The UK AI Safety Summit Opened a New Chapter in AI Diplomacy” – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 9 November 2023

• “Silo AI unveils Poro, a new open source language model for Europe” – VentureBeat, 13 November 2023

• “Europe’s AI Act talks head for crunch point” – TechCrunch, 14 November 2023

• “OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say” – Reuters, 23 November 2023

• “Europe’s AI Act talks head for crunch point” – TechCrunch, 14 November 2023

• “The lessons of the OpenAI soap opera for Europe” – Financial Times, 24 November 2023

• Everything can be AI if you want it to be.

• A broad overview of the computational linguistics start-up landscape in Europe

• Learn how to say Merry Christmas in Europe’s languages.

• “Machines are not translators” – On November 15, the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations (CEATL) published a Statement on Artificial Intelligence

• Can you guess the European Language? Enjoy this fun game show and try for yourself.

The DataBri-X project aims at improving how data is managed and used across Europe. It focuses on making data sharing and usage more efficient, trustworthy, and aligned with European values, especially in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The project addresses challenges like safely sharing data, ensuring data is consistent and accurate, and managing who owns data and how it's used. It employs a holistic approach to the data lifecycle, in compliance with the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) principles.

One of the main goals of DataBri-X is to develop new tools and systems to help manage data better throughout its entire lifecycle. These tools are designed to make it easier to find, access, share, and use data while keeping it secure and respecting privacy laws.

The project brings together a variety of European organisations to work on these challenges, combining their expertise in different areas. The result will be a toolbox of resources and methods that can be used by businesses, governments, researchers, and other stakeholders to handle data more effectively and responsibly, in a way that's also energy-efficient.

You can read all about it and stay up to date on https://databri-x.eu.

Graph Analysis Toolbox – This month’s featured tool is a python toolbox for the generation, management, processing and analysis of a collection of graphs. It enables the generation of large and sparse similarity graphs from document embeddings using different metrics, inference of bipartite graphs from the node attributes of a given graph as well as of new graphs from the combination (transduction, induction) of other graphs, algorithms for community detection, centrality measures, as well as graph layout and visualization features.

If you have an event that you think the European language technology community should know about, get in touch with us to have it featured in this newsletter.

The next ELT newsletter will take a short break over the holidays and will be back in 2024. Until then, follow our ELT social media accounts (as linked below) for the latest news!