Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society FAIS calls for proposals for Special Interest Groups (SIGs) within FAIS. The aim is to foster bottom-up activities by bringing together FAIS members with similar interests in AI-related topics and questions though SIGs activities. In particular, some of the primary aims of SIGs are to foster interest, networking, meetings, communication, and collaboration in a focused topic in artificial intelligence. Possible SIG activities may be centered around particular research areas in AI, but may also focus around other AI-related aspects, such as education; students; AI-related regulation and standardization; minorities in AI; interactions between industry, academia and other stakeholders concerning AI, to name a few potential topics for SIGs.
Each approved SIG will be given visibility on these webpages (e.g. via a forum similar to the General Discussion Board) and at yearly FAIS meetings. Each SIG will also report on its main activities yearly in a FAIS general assembly. By default, FAIS will not provide funding to individual SIGs.
Submitting Proposals:
SIG proposal can be submitted at any time by a group of FAIS members seeking a SIG status to the FAIS board using the email address sig-proposals@stes.fi. The proposal must contain a clearly stated purpose of the SIG and argue why it would be desirable that the proposed SIG would be associated with the FAIS. In addition, the proposal should list FAIS members who are initially interested in joining the proposed SIG and identify two or more persons willing to lead the proposed SIG activities. A SIG is expected to bring together at least 10 FAIS members with various different affiliations and ideally geographic locations.
Proposals may be submitted any time. Each proposal will be discussed and its approval decided by the FAIS board. Based on the received proposals, the board may also suggest to e.g. merge multiple promising proposals in to one concrete SIG in case several clearly related proposals are received.