The EU strategic autonomy in the digital economy requires more and more data to be processed in the Cloud-Edge-IoT computing continuum, instead of only the central cloud. This requires advanced automation and intelligence of the continuum. At the same time, recent breakthroughs in AI research have shown unprecedented intelligence to handle creative tasks. Such human-like intelligence will eventually disrupt ow people use the cloud an dcontinuum. INTEND aims at bringing such human-like intelligence into the cognitive continuum, to achieve the novel concept of intent-based data operation, which is capable of: (1) continually learning how to manage and adapt heterogeneous cloud/edge resources for more efficient data processing, (2) strategic decision making across the decentralized continuum for end-to-end data security and sustainablility, and (3) human-friendly interaction with data stakeholders in natural language, for effective and trustworthy human-entric data operationn.
