DigitalWallonia4.ai : artificial intelligence at the service of citizens and companies in Wallonia

As part of the Digital Wallonia digital strategy, in coordination with the federal level, Wallonia aims to be one of the pioneering initiatives in the field of artificial intelligence through the digitalwallonia4.ai programme.

Wallonia participated in the work of the high-level expert group of the AI4Belgium Coalition launched in March 2019 through the Conseil du Numérique and the Agence du Numérique. The Region has also mobilised its entrepreneurial forces through the constitution of the AI Network.

A collective of Walloon actors wishing to put artificial intelligence at the service of the territory, this regional community goes well beyond a simple cluster of companies by also bringing together actors from the academic and research world, the public sector and civil society. The objective of this collective is to accelerate the economic development of companies and organisations in Wallonia thanks to artificial intelligence technologies.

To achieve this objective, the IA network has set itself several missions:

• to gather expertise and clarify the existing ecosystem around artificial intelligence;
• to support companies and organisations wishing to incorporate artificial intelligence into their business by enabling them to find experts with complementary specialities (technical, legal, fiscal, strategic, etc.) in one place;
• to create synergies between the different initiatives and existing organisations;
• to centralise different information on the subject of artificial intelligence;
• to offer a place for sharing experiences between experts in the field in order to increase the competence and perspectives of each one;
• to stimulate reflection in order to define the important axes in terms of training, regional priorities and ethics by cross-referencing the opinions of experts in complementary disciplines;
• to present the initial and continuing training offer and define the new needs necessary for the development of companies.

It is in this perspective that the AI Network is one of the founding members of the National Coalition AI4Belgium.

Artificial intelligence is a key economic issue for future competitiveness and employment in Wallonia. All sectors of activity will be impacted by this development, which some consider as important as the electricity revolution.

The importance of this initiative should be emphasised with regard to three issues for Wallonia.

These technologies, by their disruptive nature, will enable a company (or a State) to significantly increase its competitiveness on the international scene, notably by improving the quality of work, increasing overall user satisfaction, sales and profits. These gains in competitiveness would therefore have a positive impact on employment and growth.

Positioning oneself in the AI sector means positioning oneself on the levers of the digital evolution concerning whole sections of extremely buoyant sectors such as industry, mobility, energy or health.

Rather than speaking of "artificial" intelligence, it seems more relevant to reason in terms of "augmented" intelligence allowing the development of a cognitive increase of individuals through a complementarity between man and machine. An augmented employee is a human being who is advised or helped by an "intelligent" machine when carrying out his work. AI is also the creation of a multitude of new jobs with high added value in data analysis or new software development models.

The objective of the digitalwallonia4.ai initiative is to sustainably include Wallonia in national and European AI initiatives in order to build a foundation of trust around transparent, ethical and responsible AI, synonymous with increased performance for companies and a significant improvement in the quality of life for citizens.

To this end, the Minister for Digital Technologies has proposed to the Walloon Government to take strong and rapid action to stimulate the adoption of AI in Wallonia.

Digitalwallonia4.ai is part of a logic of priming the future investments that will be necessary to support a regional dynamic around AI. With this in mind, digitalwallonia4.ai will have a budget of 875,000 euros from 2019, which will be implemented by the Digital Agency and its partners as part of the Digital Wallonia regional strategy.

Thanks to these means and the commitment of the regional actors already involved in this dynamic, a series of concrete actions have already been programmed around 4 structuring axes.

This priority involves the implementation of information and awareness-raising actions. The objective is to increase the general level of information of the Walloon population and to make companies aware of the challenges and opportunities of AI.

The first initiatives will start in May 2019.

The objective is to support and accelerate the digital transformation processes of companies. They must integrate AI technologies that create added value into their business approaches and lead to the creation of "enhanced" products and services. This will notably involve supporting companies in the development of prototypes in the form of maturity and AI and PoC diagnostics.

Start-up is planned for May 2019.

This third area focuses on the availability of training to increase the average level of AI technical skills for both the active and inactive strata of the population. This objective will be pursued through training in AI for :

• inactive people with no specific training;
• business managers and executives.

The first initiatives will start in September 2019

Finally, DigitalWallonia4.ai aims to network national and international actors specialised in the field of AI in order to accelerate the development and consolidation of our progress in AI via :

• actions in partnership with the AI4BELGIUM National Hub
• networking with the main AI actors at the European level;
• the activation of the Digital Wallonia International Hubs.

The first initiatives have already been launched.

The Digital Wallonia platform offers cartography :

• companies active in the field of artificial intelligence.
• research players in the field of artificial intelligence.

As part of the 2018 barometer of the digital sector, the AdN has highlighted the importance of artificial intelligence in the activities of the digital research sector in Wallonia.