The study program "Safe Artificial Intelligence" is currently being set up as the first study program which is designed by members of the Research Center.
The increasing use of large data resources and automated decision systems raises the demand for safe, reliable, and trustworthy intelligent systems. Such intelligent systems are replacing mechanical and control units that are traditionally operated by humans manually. Providing predictability, efficiency, and safety for such systems is crucial to satisfy the safety and cost requirements in our society. It is obligatory that research and education tackle two main challenges: (1) Empowerment of humans to design, understand, control and verify intelligent systems. (2) Development of verifiable intelligent systems that include mathematical guarantees, formal specification of safety criteria and self-explainable algorithms. The Safe AI study program aims at training research master students that can tackle these two challenges as two sides of one coin. It also targets to improve the internationalization of TU Dortmund University and Department of Computer Science to offer an elite master study program in English.
The study program fits and extends the research profile of TU Dortmund in the area of “Data Analysis, Modeling and Simulation”. Data Analysis is not only a key discipline of modern science, but it also induces safety concerns that we want to address in our new M.Sc. program. Increasingly complex systems in the natural sciences, engineering and economics also increase the probability of failures, misuse, and lack of explainability and trust in these systems.
The 4 semester Safe AI study program will aim to admit students with Bachelor degrees in the following directions (1) Computer Science, (2) Mathematics, (3) Computer engineering, (4) Physics, and (5) Statistics. Students should demonstrate their potential capability of research. This study program will be promoted as an elite program, and, therefore, would target to admit students with Bachelor Grade no worse than 2,3. Additionally, students should demonstrate their interest and capability by submitting a scientific essay in the direction of Safe Intelligent Systems, which has to be assessed by the admission committee. Such an essay can be a research proposal, based on an existing publication, or things equivalent.