Paving the way for trustworthy artificial intelligence

Alexander Ilic is drawn to exciting tasks – this has always been a priority for the 39-year-old when deciding to take on a new professional challenge. And the same applies to his latest career move: Ilic has been Executive Director of the new ETH AI Center, which will open officially on 20 October, since 1 October 2020.

The ETH AI Center has been established with the aim of bringing together researchers who are investigating the theoretical or methodological foundations of artificial intelligence (AI), developing AI methods for their area of expertise or researching the effects of AI.

One of the centre’s priorities will be to foster top talents who are able to develop new AI approaches at the intersection of basic research, industry and entrepreneurship. “I like this talent-focused approach; I see opportunities to help shape the leaders and AI landscape of tomorrow, and to put my experience to good use,” says Ilic.

Alexander Ilic, Andreas Krause (Chairman of the ETH AI Center) and Detlef Günther (Vice President for Research) will give further information about the ETH AI Center and how to get involved at the opening on 20 October. This will be broadcast via live stream. ETH members and interested individuals are invited to attend (see box).

Experiences in start-up culture

Exciting tasks run like a thread through Ilic's career: “I’ve always been on the look-out for inspiring people and where I can learn the most,” he says. This was the case during his computer science studies, which he completed in Munich from 2000 to 2003 in less than half the typical study duration.

It was there that he first came into contact with artificial intelligence and participated in computational linguistics projects that dealt with communication between humans and machines, and the question of whether and how cars can be controlled by mere speech.

Ilic came to ETH in 2006 because he was impressed by Elgar Fleisch and his colleagues: “I was thrilled by everything I could learn from these inspiring people,” recalls Ilic, who is both Swiss and German. Under the supervision of Fleisch, Professor of Information Management, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on adaptive sensor systems in logistics.

During a research period at MIT in Boston, he learned how Americans approach business start-ups: “At MIT, the question is not if you want to start a company, but when. The vibrant, academically anchored start-up scene there significantly shaped my attitude to entrepreneurship.”

In 2009, Ilic was one of the group of students who founded the ETH spin-off Dacuda. The question that captivated Ilic at the time was how image processing-related computer vision technology could be turned into a product for the IT consumer market. Dacuda invented the world's first scanning computer mouse and, as the camera technology of smartphones advanced, focused on camera-based position tracking and 3D scanning for virtual and augmented reality.

Dacuda was so successful that it was acquired by the American augmented reality company Magic Leap in 2017. Ilic recognised his next exciting challenge and took over the leadership of Magic Leap Switzerland.

From the “next big thing” to human-centric AI

He was excited at the chance to help shape a technology that may well be the next major technological breakthrough after the smartphone. “Augmented reality” refers to technology that is related to computer vision and which connects real and virtual worlds. Typical applications involve smartphones; for example, when you visit a city and information about it is displayed directly on the buildings or is presented by a virtual avatar.

Today, this mostly takes place on a smartphone screen, but in future this information could be projected directly on to the retina via glasses. Unlike smartphones, these AI-powered glasses would be able to react automatically and directly to changes in the environment, and thus support us in our everyday lives even more effectively than smartphones.

While abroad all major technology companies are already investing in the next technological advances, observes Ilic, Europe remains relatively passive. Ilic believes that artificial intelligence is the next wave of digitalisation, in which new companies will emerge and existing market leaders will disappear.

“Technological progress will change our society,” he says. “Now it is up to us to actively shape this in line with our values.” For Ilic, this was a major reason to move from an American technology pioneer to co-founding and leading the ETH AI Center.

Basic research and practical relevance

The centre’s mission statement reflects its focus on social values with people at the core of its activities. One of the main research areas at the ETH AI Center is the question of what makes artificial intelligence trustworthy – an issue that particularly resonates with Ilic.

The issue of how to develop AI models that operate safely and reliably and where the results are explainable, interpretable and fair is a high priority at the ETH AI Center, since it is tied to highly relevant questions about the social impact and ethics of AI (cf. Globe 3/2020).

Ilic believes that AI offers numerous development opportunities at the intersection of teaching, research, industry and entrepreneurship. Ilic, who has twice been named Entrepreneur of the Year and who completed his habilitation at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), wants to contribute his experience and foster talent in the AI field in order “to shape our future responsibly as researchers, innovation drivers and entrepreneurs”.