AI-BRIDGES Open Forum: Reminder re June 26th meeting

[Shani Evenstein Sigalov]

Hello everyone, 

It was lovely seeing some of you in person during the AI-BRIDGES Symposium, and if you weren't able to join us -- worry not! We'll be posting recordings and all other reflections soon. 

This is a gentle reminder that this coming Friday, June 26th, we'll be meeting at 15:00 UK time for our monthly Open Forum meeting. If you haven't yet, here is a link to a calendar invite.

Meeting agenda:

* Short update on the AI-BRIDGES Symposium in May and update on the project’s progress.
* Presentation by Jason Evans, Open Data Manager, at the National Library of Wales.
* Presentation by Adrián Cuadrón Cortés, a researcher working at the HiTZ Center (University of the Basque Country) on the ECHOLOT project.
*  Update on the AI-BRIGDES project: including the AI-BRIDGES Symposium in May, an update on the project's development, and a brief discussion of Wikimania, which will be hosted this year in Paris during July 21-25.

See you all soon!

Shani & the AI-BRIDGES team.

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Details of Jason’s presentation:

Title: “Transforming Data with Wikidata and AI and the National Library of Wales”

Short blurb: Jason Evans, Wikimedian, Open Data Manager and AI lead at the National Library of Wales will discuss efforts to enrich traditional library Metadata using AI tools and Wikidata. His talk will explore the challenges and opportunities of employing AI in a trusted knowledge institution and the importance of Open crowd sourced data in enriching digital infrastructure. He will show practical examples of how AI can be used to enrich data, and improve access to knowledge.”

Details of Adrián’s presentation:
Title: “Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Digital Knowledge Space: Entity Recognition and Linking with culturally aware LLMs”

Short blurb: Integrating cultural heritage collections into the digital knowledge space requires accurately identifying and linking entities across multilingual historical documents. In the ECHOLOT project, we explore the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to recognize, disambiguate, and reconcile entities with open knowledge bases such as Wikidata. Focusing on Basque (Euskara), a low-resource language, we investigate how culturally aware models such as Latxa, developed by the HiTZ Center, can improve entity linking by leveraging stronger linguistic and cultural knowledge.

Short Bio: I studied Computer Engineering and later completed a Master’s in Language Analysis and Processing. I am currently a researcher working at the HiTZ Center (EHU) on the Echolot project, where my work focuses on entity recognition and entity reconciliation. In previous projects, I have also worked extensively on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.