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Competence Center for Generative AI

The Competence Center for Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) explores the potential of algorithms (like ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion) that create new content. We research and provide information, support and consulting. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the impact of these models on society.

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new data, some of which is difficult to distinguish from human content. The generated content includes for example text, sound and images. As a result, the technology has implications for many areas of society, including speech processing, music and medicine. As a contribution to a sustainable use and handling of generative AI in education, research and industry, the Competence Center brings together existing experiences, provides the framework for networking and facilitates new projects.

The ZHAW can draw on a longstanding expertise on generative AI. Since 2016, for example, the Center for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) has been working with generative models for language generation and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (IUD) with machine translation tools. The Competence Center for Generative AI unites experts from many different disciplines that analyse and develop generative AI models and investigate their impact on society.

In addition to applied research, development and (further) education courses, our focus is also on services and events. Join us on this exciting journey of discovery and knowledge-sharing!

Focal Points and Topics

  • Scientifically sound experiments to assess the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT and similar models.
  • Implementation of showcases how generative language models can be used in industry, education, and research.
  • Webinars, talks, and presentations to inform the research and industrial communities about the capabilities, limitations, and best practices for using generative language models.
  • Meetups and expert meetings with the goal of knowledge exchange and cooperation encouragement among all interested parties in the field of generative language models. 
  • A point of contact for the public where our experts will answer questions about ChatGPT and similar models via phone or video call (details coming soon).
  • A series of blog articles highlighting the latest scientific findings, industrial use cases, and guidelines for using generative language models in academia.
  • Guidelines for teachers and lecturers at schools and universities on how to deal with generative language models in exercises and exams and how to benefit from them in teaching.

Events and courses

WBK Generative AI in Teaching and Continuing Education (2 ECTS, in German): The continuing education course provides a deep understanding of generative AI models through practical examples and hands-on exercises. The focus is on the impact of generative AI in teaching and continuing education, useful applications for teachers and instructors, learning objectives and assessments, as well as legal aspects and future developments. Registration

Upcoming Activities:

Past Events:

Research Projects and Publications

Projects

  • Live demonstration of Swiss German speech input to stable-diffusion-based image synthesis (internal showcase, 2022)
  • Automatic Generation of Meeting Summaries (Innosuisse Project, completed 2022)
  • LIHLITH - Learning to Interact with Humans by Lifelong Interaction with Humans (a fundamental European research project completed in 2020)
  • Fact-aware Abstractive Text Summarization using a Pointer-Generator Network  ("German Text Summarization" Challenge at SwissText 2019)
  • Headline Generation for Newspaper Articles (a project with a media partner, completed in 2019)

Publications

  • In-Depth Analysis of Automated Metrics for Text Generation Systems (peer-reviewed paper, 2022)
  • Solution for Improving Back-Translation of Database Queries into Natural Language (peer-reviewed paper, 2022; technology integrated into the NL2DB demo) 
  • Computer vision system using medical image synthesis for data homogenization (peer-reviewed paper, 2021)
  • Survey Paper on Evaluation of Dialogue Systems (survey paper, 2021)
  • Generating Restaurant Reviews from Structured Data (peer-reviewed paper, 2018) 
  • End-to-end Trainable System for Enhancing Diversity in Natural Language Generation (system description, 2017)

Experts and Organisation

Experts

For ZHAW Employees

As a ZHAW employee, you can participate actively or passively in the Competence Center: as an «expert» you have expertise on the topic of generative AI; or as a «follower» in our MS Teams channel, if you are simply interested in the topic or have questions about it. Feel free to contact us by sending as an e-mail: generativeAI@zhaw.ch.

Organization

In the Media