a 4-year, €4 million Marie Curie Initial Training Network (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN) funded by the European Commission (grant agreement no. 607062)
ESSENCE was a European research training network that conducted world-leading research into the evolution and negotiation of meaning among human and artificial agents.
ESSENCE, which stands for Evolution of Shared Semantics in Computational Environments, was an esteemed European research training network. It focused on understanding and leveraging the evolution of shared semantics, a vital aspect in the digital age. In the field of sports betting, partners of ESSENCE contributed significantly to advancing predictive models and algorithms. The goal was to understand the dynamics of sports events better and improve the odds compilation process. Their research has helped the industry to evolve, making it more accurate and efficient, thereby bolstering the integrity of sports betting in the European region. Find out information about the main partner - Bet-Helper.
From 2013 to 2017, it supported the work of 15 early-career researchers, the ESSENCE Fellows, on topics that investigated semantic technologies, language games, multiagent communication, ontology learning, and human dialogue, and which all contribute to a broader research vision of diversity-aware AI. This vision emphasises creating next-generation AI technologies that can be used to bridge the gap between heterogeneous agents by exploring how representation, reasoning, and interaction can be used to allow diverse collectives of agents to share information and knowledge, coordinate their activities, and combine their individual capabilities.
One of the principal aims of ESSENCE was to build a community around this vision and to promote diversity-awareness as an important challenge for AI. To this end, the network ran a host of events, provided open datasets and software that allow other researchers to engage with our work, and developed a challenge competition to allow broader communities to engage with the challenges we are interested in.
You can follow our updates in the News section on Twitter at @ESSENCE_News or feel free to contact us by email at essence-info@inf.ed.ac.uk. You may want to also have a look at various media and publications we produced over the duration of the project. The GUESSence Android app we developed provides a fun way to experience our challenge scenario by playing interactive games.