The evolution towards 6G and the realization of twin (green & digital) transition of societies require a paradigm shift across the whole telecom segments covering radio access networks, which will overwhelmingly be used for connecting intelligent devices, as well as optical transport networks, which offer high-speed connectivity to homes, enterprises; and 5G/6G backbones distributed across cities, countries, and even continents. Such transformation requires the availability of powerful computing resources very close to the end-customers to run applications on the edge in a dynamic fashion (primarily based on cloud-native architecture). These instances should be also interconnected with high-speed secure links to run large scale distributed applications that run smart cities, smart factories, smart farms, etc. The operation of such infrastructure will no longer be feasible with numerous manually-operated systems. There is no doubt in the entire industry that network automation has to be realized to alleviate the inefficiencies that lead to high operational costs as well as its unsustainable consequences. This lack of efficiency could result in high energy consumption and eventual rise in CO2 emissions, which have to be monitored and optimized across the whole infrastructure. A key player to achieve this necessary transformation is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which its adoption itself should be guaranteed secure, trustworthy, and certifiable. Moreover, the current national security challenges and economical wars necessitate securing the entire digital infrastructure of the EU that rely on the underlying telecom infrastructure. Natural disasters, cybersecurity threats, and outages could critically affect the whole digitized society and result in billions of euros of loss if not prevented or tackled in time. The workshop offers a medium to discuss the key achievements of the AI-NET project and provides an opportunity to interact with the conference participants. The topics will be presented in the form of invited talks of 12 minutes (+3 minutues Q&A). Apart from presentations, a moderated panel discussion including research and industrial representatives will deal with the trending topics in this area, with the aim to have an interactive discussion with the audience.

Speakers

1. Andre Gilerson (Fraunhofer IPT)
   • Kubernetes on the edge – orchestrating heterogenous IoT systems
2. Carlos Natalino (Chalmers University of Technology)
   • The role of AI/ML-as-a-Service in Intelligent Network Automation
3. David Hock (Infosim)
   • AI-based Network Management – a deeper look into selected use cases
4. Hans Dieter Schotten (DFKI)
   • The Role of Sustainability as Design Goal for 6G
5. Jasper Müller (Adtran / ADVA Optical Networking)
   • Harnessing AI for Fiber-Optic Sensing in Communication Networks and Infrastructure Monitoring
6. Johan Sandell (Waystream)
   • Towards automated and proactive anomaly detection in fiber access networks
7. Pooyan Safari (Fraunhofer HHI)
   • Privacy-Preserving AI: Requirements, Architectural Aspects, and Use-cases
8. Stefan Melin (Telia Company)
   • An operators view on functions in the Optical SDN architecture
9. Toktam Mahmoodi (King’s College London)
   • Dealing with Heterogeneity in Edge Intelligence
10. Patricia Layec (Nokia Bell Labs)
    • The power of data towards automated event classification and failure localization