The AI Awards 2024, which annually recognize the most significant achievements in artificial intelligence, were presented on November 21, 2024, at the Vzlet Cultural Center in Prague. This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Tomáš Mikolov, a leading researcher in AI at CIIRC CTU and an ELLIS Fellow. Mikolov is known for his pioneering work in self-supervised learning, a key technology behind current large language models like ChatGPT.
In his acceptance speech, Mikolov emphasized the incredible talent present in the Czech Republic but also pointed out the ongoing challenge of inadequate funding for AI projects. He called for structural changes in education and science support to better foster innovation and research in the country.
The expert jury selected winners from a pool of 134 nominations, recognizing achievements across a variety of categories:
- AI for Societal Impact:
Verifee Research Collective was awarded for its unique solution to combating disinformation, focusing on article credibility rather than traditional fact-checking. - AI in Education:
ScioBot, a tool now used by over 30,000 teachers for lesson planning and content creation. - AI in Business:
Fly4Future, innovators of flying robots equipped with onboard AI, who have successfully entered the global market. - AI in Public Administration:
Adéla, a conversational assistant developed by MAMA TELMA AI, which revolutionized recruitment in the Czech Armed Forces, tripling the number of applicants. - Research and Development:
Ondřej Dušek from Charles University was recognized for his contributions to natural language generation and the integration of neural models with knowledge graphs.
We would like to congratulate Tomáš Mikolov on this well-deserved recognition. As an ELLIS Fellow, his work has had a significant impact on the AI community, especially in the field of self-supervised learning. We are proud to have him as part of the ELLIS network and look forward to his future achievements. Congratulations, Tomáš!
For more details, visit AIAwards.cz or read the article on the CIIRC CTU website.