Policy, Strategy and Regulation

Numbers

A proposal for a Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe, CLAIRE, is gaining traction since its inception earlier this year. It is supported by the vast majority of the European AI research community, including members of EurAI, IEEE and AAAI. CLAIRE’s ambition is to strengthen the European AI ecosystem through the establishment of a distributed confederation of AI laboratories as well as through an increase in collaboration and coordination within academia and research. CLAIRE recently joined forces with another ongoing proposal, European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), to push for a common infrastructure across Europe. https://claire-ai.org

Ecosystem

The IEEE Standards Association launched ECPAIS, the Ethics Certification Program for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. ECPAIS will outline a process through which AI/IS systems could be certified as well as define the necessary metrics to achieve such a certification. The program focuses specifically on certification in regard to transparency, accountability and algorithmic bias in AI/IS systems and services. The City of Vienna (Austria), Finland’s Ministry of Finance and the City of Espoo are already involved alongside industry actors. 
https://standards.ieee.org/industry-connections/ecpais.html

The European Parliament adopted a regulation on the free flow of non-personal data on the 4th of October. Allowing for unrestricted flow of non-personal data across EU borders and IT systems is a key pillar of the Digital Single Market and is expected to open new opportunities for businesses. The regulation removes unjustified data localisation restrictions by public authorities across Member States and provides an overarching principle, creating legal certainty for SMEs and businesses. It will come into force by the end of 2018. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/proposal-regulation-european-parliament-and-council-framework-free-flow-non-personal-data