From Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
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The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, representing Ireland, participated in the first Assembly of Members of the Alliance for Language Technologies (ALT-EDIC) recently in Paris.
This initiative, which takes the form of a European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC), bringing together various Member States, was created by a decision of the European Commission on February 7th, 2024. While respecting copyright and related rights, it will protect and enhance Europe's cultural and linguistic heritage within an innovative, competitive, ethical, and sovereign artificial intelligence ecosystem.
The main objective of the project is to preserve linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe as well as to promote technological excellence. This will be achieved primarily through the development of a common European infrastructure, focussing especially on natural language processing and large multi-language models (LLMs), with a particular emphasis on the needs of lesser-used languages such as Irish.
Twelve Member States – Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, and Spain – are currently part of ALT-EDIC. Austria, Belgium and the Flemish Region, Denmark, Estonia, Malta, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia have observer status. Discussions are ongoing with other Member States with a view to their joining the initiative.
Welcoming the establishment of ALT-EDIC and Ireland's participation as a founding member, Minister of State Thomas Byrne said:
"I am very pleased that my Department, on behalf of the State, has joined ALT-EDIC and is actively involved in the work involved in establishing the organisation’s structures. In this era of artificial intelligence, it is important that we are proactive in the measures to be taken to make Ireland and Europe excel in relevant areas of modern technology. As a result of this work, this country and the Irish language will be at the heart of upcoming developments in relation to large language models and the services arising from these technologies to citizens."
Recruitment of the Director of ALT-EDIC
ALT-EDIC is in the process of recruiting a Director; the successful candidate will act as the overall manager of ALT-EDIC and as the legal representative of the organisation. The deadline for applications for the position is 31 May 2024. Relevant information about the position is available on the Department's website .