“The greatest success would be if the centre were to be absorbed into something bigger”

Together with Professor Bernhard Schölkopf, you are co-director of the CLS. What is your role?
After founding the CLS, it was necessary to define the operational framework, advance the scientific agenda, promote cooperation and build a community of researchers. My task was also to integrate the diverse environment of ETH Zurich into this cooperation. While the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems is a single organisational unit, various departments at ETH Zurich are involved, including the Departments of Computer Science, Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics. Finally, we defined the strategic direction of the centre in Europe and sought to attract young talents for our doctoral program. For this purpose, we developed a centralised selection process with strict quality requirements.

Has the centre already contributed to research?
We are not working on a single major research project, but are pursuing a wide range of research questions. Since our goal is to connect ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, one of the criteria we use to measure our success is the number of joint high-profile scientific publications. Numerous publications have already been produced in areas ranging from robotics and computer vision to causality and theoretical fundamental research, which I am working on, too.

With topics like robotics, the potential benefits are obvious. What are the benefits of theoretical fundamental research?
One of the big problems in machine learning is that we can train these gigantic models with huge amounts of data for various tasks, but we do not sufficiently understand how and why they work. For example, models often do not map the causal relationships in the world, but make predictions based on observational data and the statistical correlations and dependencies contained therein. However, causal relationships need to be taken into account to make our models more transferable, reliable and transparent.

At the same time, these theoretical questions are very relevant to practice. Our fundamental research does not only bring benefits in the distant future – we answer pressing questions that arise today. There is also a certain division of labour between academic research and industry. We cannot compete with large companies that use these models for a variety of commercial applications, but we can lay the foundations for better models.

What will the next five years bring?
We want to continue our research, doctoral programme and public communications. We also plan to enable Master’s students to do research at the centre. At the same time, our aim is to make the CLS a nucleus for a European network of researchers, even beyond the next five years. Today, the field of artificial intelligence is confronted with high expectations from politicians and the public. Many countries have launched national research initiatives. Research institutes in Europe must become organised and join forces, which takes time. Since the CLS started very early, we are already up and running and can now grow organically. Other initiatives also benefit from our experience, such as ETH Zurich’s own Center for Artificial Intelligence, which is currently being established, or the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), which networks scientists throughout Europe.

Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate all forces in one large institution from the outset instead of founding so many different centres and networks?
It is indeed our “secret plan” to merge the activities of these institutions, for example in a Europe-wide ELLIS institute, which could also include the CLS and the ETH Center for Artificial Intelligence. The greatest lasting success for me would be if the centre were to be absorbed into something bigger. However, it is difficult to create a large institute out of nothing. That is why we are slowly approaching the issue through various smaller initiatives.

Does Switzerland need a national AI initiative?
Instead of founding a national centre, we should combine existing centres of excellence in AI and use them to contribute to a pan-European network. Major global players such as the USA and China are also active in this field. If European countries do not think beyond their borders, they will have little success. If, on the other hand, Swiss expertise is placed in a European context, Switzerland can not only contribute a great deal, but also gain global visibility and considerable influence in Europe.