AI Directory Community Events Projects Join Us

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and we'll keep you updated with the latest news and opportunities.

Recent News

Knowledge 4 All Foundation Completes Successful Engagements in European AI Excellence Networks: HumanE AI and ELISE

Knowledge 4 All Foundation (K4A) is pleased to announce the successful completion of its engagements in two prominent European Networks of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Excellence Centres: the HumanE AI Network and ELISE (European Learning and Intelligent Systems Excellence). These initiatives have been instrumental in advancing human-centric AI research and fostering collaboration across Europe.

Both HumaneAI-Net and ELISE were part of the H2020 ICT-48-2020 call, fostering AI research excellence in Europe.
Both HumaneAI-Net and ELISE were part of the H2020 ICT-48-2020 call, fostering AI research excellence in Europe

The HumanE AI Network, comprising leading European research centres, universities, and industrial enterprises, has focused on developing AI technologies that align with European ethical values and societal norms. K4A’s participation in this network has contributed to shaping AI research directions, methods, and results, ensuring that AI advancements are beneficial to individuals and society as a whole.

In the ELISE project, K4A collaborated with a network of AI research hubs and associated fellows to promote research excellence and innovation in machine learning and AI. ELISE has emphasized the importance of data safety, security, and the development of explainable and trustworthy AI outcomes. K4A’s involvement has supported the dissemination of knowledge and methods across academia, industry, and society, contributing to Europe’s strategic advantage in AI technologies.

K4A remains committed to advancing AI research and development, building upon the foundations established through these collaborations. The foundation looks forward to future opportunities to contribute to the global AI community and to promote the responsible and ethical development of AI technologies.

Knowledge 4 All Foundation Completes NLP Projects with Lacuna Fund, Transitions Efforts to Deep Learning Indaba Charity

Knowledge 4 All Completes NLP Projects, Passing the Torch to Deep Learning Indaba
Completed NLP Projects, Passing the Torch to Deep Learning Indaba

The Knowledge 4 All Foundation is pleased to announce the successful completion of its Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects under the Lacuna Fund initiative. These projects aimed to develop open and accessible datasets for machine learning applications, focusing on low-resource languages and cultures in Africa and Latin America.

The portfolio includes impactful initiatives such as NaijaVoice, which focuses on creating datasets for Nigerian languages, Masakhane Natural Language Understanding, which advances NLU capabilities for African languages, and Masakhane Domain Adaptation in Machine Translation, targeting improved domain-specific machine translation systems. The Foundation’s efforts have significantly contributed to assisting African researchers and research institutions in creating inclusive datasets that address critical needs in these regions.

As part of a strategic transition, the Foundation has entrusted the continuation and expansion of these initiatives to the Deep Learning Indaba charity. The Deep Learning Indaba, dedicated to strengthening machine learning and artificial intelligence across Africa, is well-positioned to build upon the groundwork laid by Knowledge 4 All. The Foundation extends its gratitude to the Deep Learning Indaba charity for taking over these projects and is confident that their expertise will further the mission of fostering inclusive and representative AI development in the future.

Knowledge 4 All Foundation Celebrates Successful Completion of Erasmus+ ENCORE+ Project, Advancing Open Education Across Europe

The Knowledge 4 All Foundation (K4A) has successfully concluded its participation in a significant European Erasmus+ project: the European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in Education (ENCORE+). The project aimed to enhance the adoption and innovation of Open Educational Resources (OER) across Europe, fostering collaboration between higher education institutions and businesses.

Knowledge 4 All Foundation Celebrates Successful Completion of Erasmus+ ENCORE+ Project, Advancing Open Education Across Europe
ENCORE+ project was part of the Erasmus+, EAC/A02/2019, KA2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices – Knowledge Alliances

Throughout its involvement, K4A played a pivotal role in developing a European OER innovation area by connecting stakeholder communities and fostering knowledge exchange. The foundation contributed to establishing open, distributed, and trusted community review strategies for OER, engaging businesses and higher education institutions in dialogues on quality and innovation. Additionally, K4A supported the integration of organizational strategies for OER in both business and academia, encouraging co-learning from successful implementations.

The successful completion of this project marks a significant milestone in K4A’s mission to promote open education and knowledge sharing. The foundation remains committed to advancing OER initiatives and looks forward to future collaborations that will continue to drive innovation and inclusivity in education and training across Europe.

K4A supported research projects in African natural language processing now available in study


K4A has been instrumental in contributing to the roadmap for African language technologies. The new study investigates the motivations, focus and challenges faced by stakeholders at the core of the NLP ecosystem in an African context.

By identifying and interviewing core stakeholders in the NLP process a number of recommendations are proposed for use by policymakers, AI researchers, and other relevant stakeholders in aid of the betterment of the development of language content and language technology.

Graphical abstract
Graphical abstract of the study published in Patterns 4, 100820, August 11, 2023

The K4A grantees have put forward the following recommendations for stakeholders working in the African language ecosystem:

  • Language acquisition of Indigenous African languages, primarily by Africans, should be better supported, and technology is a means to do this, as has been the case for many other non-African languages.
  • Basic tooling to support content creation on digital platforms, such as digital dictionaries, thesauruses, keyboards supporting diacritics where relevant, and spell checkers that recognize African names and places without error, should be prioritized.
  • Language tools and processes for content moderation and to catch and control the spread of misinformation online in Indigenous African languages should be developed and actively used.
  • Language careers and the professional opportunities available, particularly as pertains to Indigenous African languages, should be made more visible to students earlier in their education so as to generate greater interest in these fields in tertiary education.
  • AI language tools that augment human activities as opposed to tools seeking to replace them should be the intentional design choice, especially given the current dearth of tooling and data for African languages.
  • Computational linguistics components should be introduced into the educational curricula of disciplines adjacent to and working with language, e.g., linguistics and journalism, with an emphasis on the role they can play in the development of ethical and inclusive AI so as to encourage a pipeline of cross-discipline stakeholders working to build language technology.
  • Professional training opportunities to enable multilingual individuals to venture into language careers should be increased.
  • The study of contemporary use of language in Africa should be emphasized, given increasing urbanization and the multicultural nature of the continent.
  • Funding for dataset creation and annotation, both of which can be time-consuming and expensive tasks, should be increased.
  • African language policies, particularly those pertaining to education and provision of government services, should be better implemented with the aid of emerging language tools and technologies.
  • Digital licensing and funding should be made suitable to support legal cases against non-African corporations who use open African data.
  • An ‘‘ethical data curation toolkit,’’ which is informed by information scientists, data privacy experts, and machine learning bias experts, would empower dataset curators with the knowledge and skills to perform informed data curation.
  • The toolkit should be accompanied by a workshop in which practical training and discussions can take place.
News Archive