AI@EDGE: A Secure and Reusable Artificial Intelligence Platform for Edge Computing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a major innovative force and a major pillar in the fourth industrial revolution. This trend has been acknowledged by the European Commission, who has pointed out how high-performance, intelligent, and secure networks are fundamental for the evolution of the multiservice Next Generation Internet (NGI). While great progress has been done in the accuracy and performance of AI-enabled platforms, their integration in autonomous decision-making and critical systems requires end-to-end quality assurance. AI@EDGE addresses these challenges harnessing the concept of “reusable, secure, and trustworthy AI for network automation”. To this end, AI@EDGE targets significant breakthroughs in two fields: (i) general-purpose frameworks for closed-loop network automation capable of supporting flexible and programmable pipelines for the creation, utilization, and adaptation of the secure, reusable, and trustworthy AI/ML models; and (ii) converged connect-compute platform for creating and managing resilient, elastic, and secure end-to-end slices supporting a diverse range of AI-enabled network applications. Cooperative perception for vehicular networks, secure, multi-stakeholder AI for Industrial Internet of Things, aerial infrastructure inspections, and inflight entertainment are the uses cases targeted by AI@EDGE to maximise its commercial, societal, and environmental impact. Index Terms—AI, 5G, MEC, automation, disaggregated RANs, ML-based security, hardware acceleration, serverless platforms.