10-10-2024
The team at the REPMUS exercise (from left to right): First Lieutenant Vitor Rodrigues, Prof. David Semedo, Prof. João Magalhães, Eng. Iago Paulo, Eng. Rafael Ferreira, Eng. Daniel Pina, Eng. Inês Carvalho and First Lieutenant Ruben Carvalho.
Researchers from NOVA FCT took part in the REPMUS exercise, organised by the Portuguese Navy with the participation of NATO, excelling in the development of advanced technological solutions. NOVA FCT's Multimodal Systems team at NOVA LINCS created an innovative AI assistant for the Navy, with the aim of processing complex tasks and critical information, demonstrating NOVA FCT's ability to respond and adapt to the technological needs of national defence.
Led by Professors João Magalhães and David Semedo, both from NOVA FCT and co-authors of the first Large Scale Language Model (LLM) trained in European Portuguese, the team has been collaborating closely with the Navy on the development of the ‘silicon navy guard’, a prototype assistant that uses natural language to help perform small, complex operational tasks described in official reference manuals. This collaboration reflects NOVA FCT's leadership in cutting-edge research in AI and emerging technologies.
In the proposed vision, human sailors will be responsible for actions that involve ethics, philosophical values, self-awareness and responsibility, as well as unforeseen situations that require empathy and emotional capacities. Meanwhile, the silicon sailors, developed with the support of the NOVA FCT team, will take on repetitive, exhausting, dangerous and difficult tasks, providing essential information on complex and critical tasks.
During the exercise, the NOVA LINCS team demonstrated an advanced multimodal conversational AI system, capable of responding to needs based on the Navy's official publications. This demonstration underlined NOVA FCT's technical and scientific expertise in the development of intelligent systems that integrate different information modalities.
NOVA FCT's participation in the REPMUS exercise with the ‘silicon navy guard’ AI assistant marks an important turning point in the development of AI systems that operate exclusively on Navy installations. This technological breakthrough, led by the NOVA FCT team, offers the Portuguese Navy an innovative, safe, auditable and effective solution, reinforcing the Faculty's role at the forefront of science and technology at the service of defence.
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