A strong data economy is emerging in Europe, where both large companies and SMEs acknowledge the fundamental value of Big Data to cause disruptive change in markets and business models . Nevertheless, the growth of the data economy is hampered by the lack of trusted, secure and ethical-driven personal data platforms and privacy-aware analytics methods capable of, on the one hand, securing the sharing of personal data and proprietary/commercial/industrial data and, on the other hand, of strictly and fairly defining how value can be captured, produced, released and cashed out for the benefit of all the stakeholders involved. Addressing this kind of concerns on privacy, ethics and IPR ownership over the DataVaults value chain is one of the cornerstones of the project. Its goal to set, sustain and mobilize an ever-growing ecosystem for personal data and insights sharing and for enhanced collaboration between stakeholders (data owners and data seekers) relies exactly on DataVaults personal data platform’s extra functionalities and methods for retaining data ownership, safeguarding security and privacy, notifying individuals of their risk exposure, as well as on securing value flow based on smart contract. DataVaults aims to deliver a framework and a platform that has personal data, coming from diverse sources in its centre and that defines secure, trusted and privacy preserving mechanisms allowing individuals to take ownership and control of their data and share them at will, through flexible data sharing and fair compensation schemes with other entities (companies or not). The overall approach will rejuvenate the personal data value chain, which could from now on be seen as a multi-sided and multi-tier ecosystem governed and regulated by smart contracts which safeguard personal data ownership, privacy and usage and attributes value to the ones who produce it.

In 2019, SMEs accounted for 99.8% of all enterprises in the EU-28 non-financial business sector and accounted for the majority of the increase in value added (60%) – EU Annual Report on SMEs, (November 2019). In the last years, the EC acknowledged that a number of areas require immediate action at EU level to ensure that: (1) SMEs will increase Europe’s competitiveness in the AI landscape leaving no SME behind (2) New technologies and AI-based product, processes and services are based on European ethical values (3) SMEs get fast, trusted and secure links to data assets, AI methods and tools that can be used expediently and build on digital sovereignty. DIHs (Digital Innovation Hubs) are a fundamental European instrument that has emerged over the last decade to address these limitations and encourage the uptake of AI across the economy. We simply need to establish the most needed link between the DIH engine and the AI4EU service platform power to ignite a virtuous cross-sectorial European economy of intelligence for SMEs at scale; precisely the SME-friendly AI vision that DIH4AI aims at fulfilling. The DIH4AI project aims at building a network of AI-on-demand innovation and collaboration platforms, supporting joint development and provision of ecosystem-business-technology-transformation services through a sustainable network of regional DIHs specialized in AI and targeting local SMEs and local tech governmental agencies. The DIH4AI regional platforms are by design interoperable with the pan-EU AI4EU platform thanks to an interoperability framework operating at Portal, Data and Cloud levels, allowing SME-DIH-EU virtuous bi-directional collaborations at the level of shared AI resources, AI-oriented standard data models and ontologies, AI ready FAIR datasets, AI-driven user interaction and services (SAAS) and AI-compatible advanced computation facilities (PAAS and IAAS).

The AI REGIO project aims at filling 3 major gaps currently preventing AI-driven DIHs from implementing fully effective digital transformation pathways for their Manufacturing SMEs: at policy level the Regional vs. EU gap; at technological level the Digital Manufacturing vs. Innovation Collaboration Platform gap; at business level the Innovative AI (Industry 5.0) vs Industry 4.0 gap. POLICY. Regional smart specialization strategies for Efficient Sustainable Manufacturing and Digital Transformation (VANGUARD initiative for Industrial Modcernisation) are so far insufficiently coordinated and integrated at cross-regional and pan-EU level. SME-driven >AI innovations cannot scale up to become pan-EU accessible in global marketplaces as well as SME-driven experiments remain trapped into a too local dimension without achieving a large scale dimension. Regional vs. EU Gap. TECHNOLOGY. Digital Manufacturing Platforms DMP and Digital Innovation Hubs DIH play a fundamental role in the implementation of the Digital Single Market and Digitsing European Industry directives to SMEs, but so far such initiatives, communities, innovation actions are running in a quite independent if not siloed way, where very often Platform-related challenges are not of interest for DIHs and Socio-Business impact not of interest for DMP. DMP vs. DIH Gap. BUSINESS. Many Industrial Data Platforms based on IOT Data in Motion and Analytics Data at Rest have been recently developed to implement effective Industry 4.0 pilots (I4MS Phase III platforms). The AI revolution and the new relationship between autonomous systems and humans (Industry 5.0) has not been properly addressed in I4MS so far. AI I5.0 vs. I4.0 Gap. AI REGIO is following the 4 steps for VANGUARD innovation strategy (learn-connect-demonstrate-commercialize) by constantly aligning its methods with the AI DIH Network initiative and its assets with I4MS/DIH BEinCPPS Phase II and MIDIH / L4MS Phase III projects. AI REGIO: Industry 5.0 for SMEs