building GrEener and more sustainable soCieties by filling the Knowledge gap in social science and engineering to enable responsible artificial intelligence co-creatiOn

GECKO will focus on accountable, responsible, and transparent artificial intelligence (ART AI) to address urgent environmental needs and support the European Green Deal and AI ecosystem, ensuring that all citizens benefit from the sustainable green transition.

The EC AI flagship report highlights the need for the input of civil society to discuss values being embedded into AI (via social sciences) and responsible design practices (via information sciences) that encode societal values and guidelines into AI system so that they are ethical by design in order to build and retain trust in AI.

ART AI is a promising approach for EU, but has not yet reached the level of maturity and urgent research and new research skills are needed to bridge the gap between disciplines.

GECKO will establish a synergy between science, humanities, and technology research, currently missing, through a ground-breaking integrated research programme giving Europe a competitive global advantage.

GECKO’s ambition is to create a sustainable, European-wide network with a critical and innovative mass, driving innovative, socio-technical AI, driving future policies with ground-breaking and responsible AI, reducing the carbon footprint of the domestic sector, tackling social justice in the energy sector, and leading the pathway towards the first carbon neutral continent.

The ‘EU added-value’ for research excellence is unique as it includes: (i) a well-balanced mixture of world-leading expertise in social science, information science, and engineering not present in individual countries; (ii) industrial stakeholders covering different aspects of technology innovation across EU; (iii) access to diverse data, resources, and stakeholders across the EU enabling public debates in different fora to translate societal values into AI system design strategies; (iv) studying cross-country (-cultural) related issues related to home technology use in civil society, identifying commonalities and differences.