The 26th edition of PRO-VE, the Socolnet Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, was held in Porto, Portugal, from 27-29 October 2025. This year’s edition centred on “Hybrid Human-AI Collaborative Networks”, was a great success!
In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a highly prominent topic, with significant investments across all continents. Advances in generative AI have led to widespread excitement and, at times, inflated expectations. Many long-term AI experts warn about the risks of these excessive expectations, and a recent MIT report even highlights a 95% failure rate in AI initiatives. Nevertheless, the number of impressive AI applications continues to grow. AI is here to stay, and our role is to make it better and more valuable to society.
As AI transitions from being a tool to becoming a true teammate, the PRO-VE community can play a crucial role in the design, support, and governance of collaboration between humans and AI agents. This was the central and inspiring theme of PRO-VE 2025.
So far, most human-AI collaboration has focused on one-to-one interactions. However, true hybrid collaborative networks, involving multiple humans and multiple AI agents, remain limited. Designing such networks requires a multidisciplinary approach, where our community can play a relevant and impactful role.
PRO-VE 2025 served as a forum for sharing and discussing current developments and experiences on the role of collaborative networks in the era of synergistic intelligence between humans and AI.
Sponsored by IFIP WG 5.5 and SOCOLNET, the event attracted over 100 participants. Proceedings are published in two volumes by Spinger in the Advances in Information and Communications Technology series, under the title “Hybrid Human-AI Collaborative Networks”.
In addition to the presentation of 60 papers selected by the International Program Committee, the conference also included three invited keynotes:
- Human-AI Coevolution – Dino Pedreschi, University of Pisa, Italy
- AI and Collaboration with Decision Makers to Make Sustainable Value Based Healthcare Systems – Vicente Traver, Universitat Politécnica de València, Spain
- Bridging Intelligence: Human-in-the-Loop AI for Predictive Quality in Industrial Operations – Bruno Silva, Muvu Technologies, Portugal
The event also included two panels – one industry-oriented and another academic-oriented, discussing the reality and challenges of human-AI collaboration.
For additional information, please visit www.pro-ve.org
Conference Program chair: Prof. Luis M. Camarinha-Matos, NOVA University Lisbon, Center of Technology and Systems (CTS), Portugal.
Photos supplied.