Helsingborg opens the National City Lab

Many municipalities in Sweden face similar challenges when embarking on their journey to use AI for developing our cities. Although some have already started, the work is very fragmented and the wheel risks being reinvented. 
 
The City of Helsingborg is now creating the National City Lab in collaboration with AI Sweden. It will be the first AI lab in a Swedish municipality that aims to find solutions and data for smart cities  in collaboration with other municipalities, the private sector, and academia.
 
“I am happy that Sweden will have its first AI lab based in a Swedish municipality, and that it is happening here in Helsingborg. Our motto is dare, try, and do. The National City Lab will be an important part of identifying innovative solutions for the benefit of the inhabitants in municipalities and regions across the country,” says Peter Danielsson (M), Chair of the Municipal Assembly in Helsingborg.

The AI ​​lab in concrete terms

• A physical space where the City of Helsingborg contributes with premises in HBG Works as well as dedicated fiber. AI Sweden together with partners provides and operates hardware with compute power to collaboratively learn and train AI models.
• Knowledge-sharing activities focused on methodology, competence and experiences from AI Sweden's Data Factory, including edge learning, language technology, legal expertise etc.
• An opportunity to share and take advantage of available datasets, models, and benchmarks, as well as to bring your own data and infrastructure challenges for collaboration and experiments.

“The value of offering a neutral setting where different types of players can collaborate and share data became apparent while working in AI Sweden's Data Factory. We hope that we can continue to facilitate unique collaborations that might otherwise never happen also in Helsingborg, and thus accelerate the use of AI in Sweden,” concludes Kim Henriksson, Testbed Architect at AI Sweden

The lab will be accessible for all AI Sweden’s partner organization. 

Please reach out to Kim Henriksson for how to get involved.