FARI Brussels Conference 2023

Linking up international perspectives to Brussels reality

Dr. Stefaan G. Verhulst is Co-Founder, Chief of R&D, and Director of the Data Program of the Governance Laboratory (The GovLab) and Co-Founder and Principal Scientific Advisor of the Data Tank – a do and think tank on data. Verhulst’s latest scholarship centers on how responsible data and technology can improve people’s lives and the creation of more effective and collaborative forms of governance. Specifically, he is interested in the perils and promises of collaborative technologies and how to harness the unprecedented volume of data and information to advance the public good.

In this talk I will share our journey starting with an international group of Indigenous technologists at the inaugural workshop series in Hawaii in 2019, leading to the IP//AI Incubator in March, 2021. Key learnings from the foundations of these works were the need for Indigenous AI to be regional in nature, conception, design and development, to be tethered to localised Indigenous laws inherent to Country, to be guided by local protocols to create the diverse standards and protocols required for the developmental processes of AI, and to be designed with our future cultural interrelationships and interactions with AI’s in mind. Through Country Centered Design we established some broad principles and protocols and then moved towards a test case, running some preliminary trials applying an Aboriginal kinship system as a selection framework in genetic computing. Our findings throughout this process were encouraging, indicating that there is potential for Indigenous Knowledge to guide the design and engineering principles and practices of AI, bridging the current ontological and epistemological divides between machines, humans and the environment.

Professor Angie Abdilla is a palawa woman. She is the founder and Director of Old Ways, New and works with Indigenous knowledges and systems in the technology. She is a Professor at the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics and she co-founded the Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence working group (IP//AI). Angie is a member of the CSIRO Data61 Advisory Group, the National AI Centre’s Think Tank and was member of the Global Futures Council on Artificial Intelligence for Humanity as part of the World Economic Forum in 2022.

In October 2022, UN Habitat and Mila – Quebec AI Institute jointly released the “AI and Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance” report. This collaborative effort aimed to provide insights on the opportunities and challenges of using AI to support the development of people-centered and sustainable cities. We will present the approach and structure of the report, including the need for inclusive governance and contextualised implementation. Building from lessons learned in the context of this work, we will then explore different approaches to developing AI that is sensitive to local contexts and embedded in a value-driven governance framework.

This talk will explore what it means to repair how we think about urban AI: as a material infrastructure that is shaping, and shaped by, its own operating environment. Digital urban innovations are proliferating rapidly, often in the name of sustainable goals. This includes improvements to the efficiency of existing systems, but also new interventions such as the monitoring and management of urban ecosystems. While this offers unique opportunities for the future of urban sustainability, such innovations should not be taken lightly. As AI-enabled innovations becomes central to restoration efforts and management practices, they will increasingly mediate our relation to urban environments. Further, this digital infrastructure comes with a very real physical footprint including energy use, resource extraction, and physical hardware. From this perspective, we can take urban AI ethics out of the cloud and into the world of material things – as a tool to repair our material world, as an infrastructure with an ecological footprint, and as formative to how ‘built’ and ‘natural’ environments interact and co-evolve. This reveals both challenges – and opportunities – to realising localised and sustainable AI in practice.

Taylor Stone is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Science and Ethics, University of Bonn, and member of the Bonn Sustainable AI Lab. His research is at the crossroads of philosophy and design, focused on to envisioning and enacting sustainable urban futures. He works on the ethics of emerging technologies and their impacts on cities, and specialises in urban lighting. His writing has appeared in several academic journals, he edited Technology and the City: Towards a Philosophy of Urban Technologies, and is an associate editor of the new Philosophy of the City Journal.

In my talk, I will present a decisive distinction between two approaches to think about local and sustainable AI. The first follows the dominant reasoning of many AI experts and consists of mobilizing AI and robotics to optimize the existing system (e.g. the optimization of current path transports in the city, with the risk of maintaining the status quo on the use of cars and reinforcing path dependencies). The second approach is based on scenarios in 2030 or 2050 featuring various digital devices (high-tech or low-tech) to foster paradigm shifts in the functioning of cities (e.g. the generalized shift to active mobility in the quarter-hour city, or the safe transition towards electric mini-mobility). This second approach, which I recommend for imagining cities that can operate within planetary boundaries and ensure environmental justice, involves design fiction methods and “foresight co-design” methods that are very interdisciplinary and open to citizens.

Christophe Abrassart is a professor at the School of Design of the Faculty of Planning at University of Montreal, where he co-leads the Lab Ville Prospective and organizes regularly foresight co-design workshops with stakeholders and citizens. He teaches methods of ecodesign, participatory design and strategic foresight applied to ecological transition. In 2018, he was responsible for the co-construction process of the Montreal Declaration on Responsible AI. He is also a researcher at OBVIA in Québec where he works on the theme of “digital sobriety”.

Robot technologies are undergoing rapid development and its implementation can cause major change and disruptions to society. These changes are already impacting much of the world around us. Areas such as production, transportation, agriculture, healthcare, and others are becoming increasingly reliant on automation and robotic technology. Therefore, it is also essential to explore how these societal changes are perceived and received by “regular citizens”, namely individuals who are not directly involved in the development of—or consulted for— when it comes to the design of robots. This presentation will emphasize the importance of engaging society in the discussion of robotics and highlight the efforts of the Robotics4EU project in this regard. We will showcase the outcomes of the “GlobalSay on Robotics,” a comprehensive citizen consultation conducted in October and November 2021 across 12 countries. The consultation aimed to gain insights into citizens’ perspectives on non-technological aspects of robotics, including potential benefits, risks, and barriers to widespread adoption in society. Additionally, we will present the results of a European-wide citizen consultation focused on validating robotics business ideas. This consultation involved 11 different companies, each presenting their robotics business ideas and receiving valuable feedback from citizens across Europe. By sharing these findings, we aim to foster a better understanding of the societal impact of robotics and the importance of involving citizens in shaping its future.

Mette Marie Simonsen is a Project Manager at the Danish Board of Technology and serves as the Work Package leader for the citizen engagement activities in the Robotics4EU project. With a Master’s degree in Sustainable Design Engineering from Aalborg University, she specializes in applying citizen and stakeholder engagement methods to research and innovation projects of novel technologies. Could potentially leave out the education part. Feel free to alter it to how you want or let me know if you need different information

If we are to include in a political deliberation the people whose interests are in question, shouldn’t we include the AI systems whose deployment is being discussed? This proposal sounds counter-intuitive, since it seems unreasonable to assign an interest or a motivation to artificial agents. But there might be an alternative rationale for their inclusion, one that is epistemic and not immediately political (democratic equality, for example).

Marc-Antoine Dilhac is director of the Algora Lab, a research lab studying the ethical and societal impact of AI and digital innovation. He is professor of philosophy at the Université de Montréal and holds the CIFAR Chair in AI ethics. In 2017, he instigated the Montréal Declaration for a Responsible Development of AI and, in 2020, led a global consultation on AI ethics for UNESCO. He sits on the Government of Canada’s AI Advisory Council and co-chair its Public Awareness Working Group. He holds a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He specialized in theories of democracy and social justice, and applied ethics with a focus on AI ethics.

In an age of rapid technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping the fabric of our democratic societies. This brief presentation delves into the profound impact of AI on the participation of young citizens in the democratic process. As AI algorithms influence information dissemination, political campaigns, and decision-making, it is crucial to scrutinize how these advancements both empower and challenge the engagement of our younger generation.

Amidst this transformative period, CollectiveUP presents a multifaceted solution:

By facilitating participatory workshops and transforming neglected urban spaces into 3D representations within the Minecraft gaming environment, we provide youths with a platform to actively shape their city’s spaces and voice their preferences.
Additionally, our AI-driven learning materials address critical topics such as bias mitigation, misinformation combat, data privacy, generative AI understanding, and advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These resources equip youth with the necessary tools to navigate the evolving digital democracy effectively.

Join us as we delve into the ramifications of AI on youth participation in democracy, highlighting the opportunities it affords for informed civic engagement. We’ll also underscore CollectiveUP’s pivotal role in nurturing a more inclusive, informed, and engaged generation of citizens.

Robots have long been considered human substitutes in the performance of dirty, dangerous and dull tasks, however, robots are increasingly envisioned as technological solutions to demographic and age-related challenges facing many developed countries. Social robots have already entered elderly care facilities in various European countries – including Denmark.

This talk explores how social robots are received and understood as healthcare technologies. More specifically how a South Korean socially assistive robot was adapted to real-life practices by Danish healthcare practitioners. Based on insights from an ethnographic fieldwork, conducted in the period of 2015-2019, the speaker argues against perceiving robots as clearly defined stand-alone objects. He maintains robots as material elements of social practices reliant on human interaction, maintenance and care.

The talk will discuss the importance of engaging healthcare practitioners in the design of sociotechnical practices that includes robots. User participation in robot system design becomes even more urgent as robots and AI inevitably will merge in advanced robotic systems in our societies.

Lasse Blond works as a specialist at the Danish Technological Institute. He is a former postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley and at Aarhus University, Denmark. He holds a PhD from Aarhus University. His research interests include human-robot interactions, ethnographic explorations of the adaptation of robots in practice, and how concepts of artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation influence design thinking among robotic system engineers. He was awarded the Internationalisation Fellowship by the Danish Carlsberg Foundation in 2018.

The use of Digital Technologies has increased the number of citizens participating in policy-making activities, and thus fostered digital mass participation at different policy levels. The larger scale of these activities and the use of digital channels has brought new challenges such as: information overload and lack of actual discussion and connection between participants and among participants and practitioners (policy makers and public sector professionals). The use of AI in digital participation platforms can help to address these challenges. This talk will discuss the potential of AI to help digital participation to reach its goals of increasing both quality and quantity of public policy and public service outcomes, and to improve the interaction between government and citizens. 

Nicolas Bono Rossello received his M.Eng. degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) in 2017 and his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences and Technology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in 2022. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in Digital and Information management at the University of Namur.

During his PhD, he worked on the use of new technologies to improve agricultural management and to support the control of epidemics. His current research focuses on the development and support of citizen participation through digital technologies. His research interests include digital citizen participation, artificial intelligence and network-based systems.

Smart mobility is a wide umbrella to different systems and services to meet various end-user needs such as safety, seamless accessibility, reliability, and affordability without compromising the collective good of the society and the environment in terms of reduced congestion, reduced emission, and sustainability. Emerging smart mobility systems and services can play instrumental roles in achieving several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by UN Member States. This talk will shed light on the roles of smart mobility as an enabler to sustainable development in developed and developing countries. The talk will also discuss a few barriers that need to be properly handled to achieve the full potential of smart mobility technology as a key enabler to achieve SDGs.

Dr. Alaa Khamis works as AI & Smart Mobility Technical Leader at General Motors Canada. He is the author of “Smart Mobility: Exploring Foundational Technologies and Wider Impacts” book and “Optimization Algorithms: AI techniques for design, planning, and control problems” book. He is also a Lecturer at University of Toronto, an Adjunct Professor at Ontario Tech University and an Affiliate Member of Center of Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (CPAMI) at University of Waterloo. He worked as Autonomous Vehicles Professor at Zewail City of Science and Technology, Head of AI at Sypron Solutions, Associate Professor and Head of Engineering Science Department at Suez University, Associate Professor and Director of Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) research group at German University in Cairo (GUC), Research Assistant Professor at University of Waterloo, Canada, Visiting Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain; and Université de Sherbrooke, Canada, Visiting Researcher at University of Reading, UK and Distinguished Scholar at University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten, Germany. His research interests include smart mobility, autonomous and connected vehicles, cognitive IoT, algorithmic robotics, humanitarian robotics, intelligent data processing and analysis, machine learning and combinatorial optimization. He published 5 books and more than 180 scientific papers in refereed journals and international conferences. I also filed 47 US patents. For more information, please visit: http://www.alaakhamis.org/

Our mobility systems are becoming increasingly digitalised though app-based shared mobility services, smart delivery systems, online ticketing and AI-driven route planning among others. These services promise a better user experience and cost savings for the operators. At the same time, however, there is an increasing digital gap leaving people with low digital skills or no state-of-the-art devices out of the benefits. The challenge is how can we can ensure that the promised benefits of digitalisation reach all sections of the society less familiar with digital services, e.g. older people, people with lower income, people with reduced mobility, persons lacking digital skills or ethnic minorities.

Dr Imre Keseru is professor of urban mobility and deputy director at the Mobilise Mobility and Logistics Research Group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). His research focuses on developing tools and methods to support participatory planning, the evaluation of urban mobility interventions, transport foresight and inclusive and equitable transport. He has been leading several projects on urban mobility including the EU-funded project “Inclusive Digital Mobility Solutions” (INDIMO).

In the ever-evolving landscape of urban transportation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands as a formidable catalyst for transformative change. Our presentation on ‘Artificial Intelligence for Public Transports’ delves into the profound impact of AI on the way we navigate cities. AI’s prowess in optimizing public transport routes is reshaping efficiency and sustainability, leveraging real-time data to minimize travel times, operational costs, and environmental footprints. Moreover, AI’s predictive maintenance capabilities are ensuring the health of transportation vehicles and infrastructure, reducing breakdowns, downtime, and maintenance expenses. Safety also takes center stage as AI systems analyze video surveillance and sensor data, swiftly detecting anomalies and responding to accidents or suspicious activities. Passengers are enjoying newfound convenience through AI-driven ticketing systems and real-time information provided by chatbots and virtual assistants, making their journeys smoother and more enjoyable. While autonomous vehicles are on the horizon, addressing regulatory and public acceptance challenges, AI is making strides in enhancing environmental sustainability by optimizing energy consumption and lowering emissions. This presentation will not only explore the vast potential of AI in public transport but also confront the ethical, cybersecurity, and accessibility considerations that come with it, promising a future where urban mobility is smarter, safer, and more efficient than ever.

Valerie Zapico is CEO/Founder of Valkuren, a company specializing in the development of Big Data solutions including Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence services, in 2 main areas: manufacturing and mobility. Valkuren’s mission is to help companies optimize their processes and improve their decision-making thanks to new ways of leveraging data, while paying close attention to human links and diversity. This is why, in parallel, Valerie is responsible for the Brussels chapter of the Women in Big Data organization and is involved in various activities linked to the AI4Belgium community.  Named Inspiring Fifty for Belgium in 2020 and in the Top 3 of ICT Women of the year 2023, Valerie is also a speaker, notably at UMons in the “Hands-on AI” certificate program.

This presentation focusses on the role of AI in the governance of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) with regards to sustainability. The presentation contributes a novel approach towards understanding the role of AI in governance processes through MaaS, and implications for social and environmental sustainability. It combines field work and a narrative literature review.

I use MaaS as a case study for mobility governance, as it is regarded as key innovation for sustainable mobility, with data and AI playing a central role. This presentation demonstrates how crucial it is that sustainability goals play a central role in the governance of MaaS, and how there is a real danger for sustainability to not be part of mobility systems.

Using MaaS as a point of departure, the presentation abstracts broader issues of AI in governance with regards to sustainable mobility futures. It demonstrates how the performativity and real-time dimension that algorithms add to governance requires co-creation and collaboration between developers, policymakers, citizens and algorithms to efficiently correspond to sustainability challenges. At the same time, it is crucial that objectives and values of algorithms are decided collectively by human private and public actors to ensure alignment of interests and public value.

Regarding the potential implications of governance with AI for public value and sustainability goals, the presentation shows that a balanced hybrid governance approach between policymakers, industry players and algorithms (as non-human actors) with explicit and dynamic feedback mechanisms is required, so that public and sustainability goals are ensured. This entails preventing governance from degenerating into algocracy (i.e., power lies with algorithms rather than with people) through transparency and democratic deliberation of sustainability objectives. To ensure public value, these objectives need to be tailored to local sustainability priorities and need to manage algorithmic biases that might result to social injustices related to algorithmic values and data representativeness as well as environmental concerns related to environmentally harmful data usage.

Overall, this presentation proposes a conceptualisation of the term hybrid governance that highlights the role of AI as actor, and captures how the interplay between human actors and AI algorithms in MaaS governance creates new accountabilities, opportunities, and risks for sustainability.

Dr. Eriketti Servou is PostDoc fellow from EuroTechPostDoc/ Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) based in the Technology, Innovation and Society group at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Eriketti is a transdisciplinary researcher with a background in the intersection of governance, socio-technical innovation, smart cities, digitalization, and sustainable mobility. She combines academic and practical experience (as an urban planner and smart cities consultant) from 5 different countries: Greece, Denmark, Germany, Scotland, and the Netherlands. 

Since 2020, VDAB wants to support every citizen in his/her career, rather than solely focussing on the support of job seekers. This means that the number of clients has grown from approximately 200,000 job seekers to about 4,000,000 individuals, the active population of Flanders. The use of innovative solutions that convert VDAB’s data capital into valuable insights plays an important role in achieving these objectives. The use of this type of data is, however, not without risks. The data may be biased or unrepresentative of reality. Consequently, AI models can learn erroneous patterns and make inaccurate predictions. Many AI applications within the HR domain are considered high-risk AI under the AI Act. Therefore, it is crucial to thoroughly identify and, where possible, mitigate the associated risks. To oversee this process, VDAB established an Ethics Council last year, an independent body that provides advice on the responsible and ethical use of data and AI. During this presentation we will give you an introduction to the AI Center of Excellence at VDAB. We will discuss how VDAB is using data and AI to support and improve its core tasks and how we govern this type of innovation at VDAB.

Ms. Karolien Scheerlinck graduated from Ghent University in 2007 with a master’s degree in Bioscience Engineering. She then started a PhD at the department “Mathematical modelling, Statistics and Bioinformatics” with a focus on heuristic optimisation algorithms. She had a first working experience as research engineer at the Belgian railway company Infrabel, where she focussed on optimising the robustness of the railway timetables. In 2014, she started to work for Be-Mobile as research engineer in the innovation lab, where she was in charge of developing algorithms to extract important insights out of traffic data. In 2017, she was recruited by VDAB as a data scientist. She worked in the innovation lab of VDAB and was, among other things, responsible for developing VDAB’s first Artificial Intelligence model “Distance to the labour market”. This model is currently used to prioritise jobseekers according to their probability to find a job. Between 2017 and 2019, the innovation lab expanded quickly and became a more mature team. Karolien played an important role as Data Scientist Lead within this team. In 2020, she became the manager of this team and transformed it into the AI Center of Excellence of VDAB. This team has a track record of award-winning tools, such as our AI vacancy matching engine Jobnet and our orientation tool Jobbereik.

Traditionally, literacy (reading and writing) empowers people to participate in society at large. Inclusion and diversity are both dependent on literacy. With the advent ot the Web and the Internet, reading and writing moved into the digital space. Digital literacy can be understood both as ability and skill to read and write in today’s digital world to be able to participate in society, and as ability and skill to navigate the digital world including information literacy, data literacy, etc, what might be called general digital literacy. With the availability of Artificial Intelligence-based applications, a new literacy seems to emerge: AI literacy as another part of general digital literacy. In this presentation I will argue that the power of AI applications can be leveraged to support digital reading and writing: AI empowers digital literacy to help people to participate in an inclusive and diverse society.

Cerstin Mahlow is professor of Digital Linguistics and Writing Research at the School of Applied Linguistics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). Her main research areas are linguistic modeling of writing processes and writing technology. She holds a Master’s degree in Computational Linguistics, Spanish Philology, and Political Sciences from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) and a PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of Zurich (UZH). As specialist in higher ed didactics and e-learning she is also interested in approaches for teaching future skills needed in today’s and tomorrow’s digitally transformed world.

In June 2023, the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency introduced guidelines for responsible development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Norwegian public sector. The guidelines aim to assist public organizations in developing and using AI in line with current and future regulations, with a focus on aspects such as explainability, risk assessments and the use of generative AI. The guidelines seek to avoid platitudes and offer practical advice to help organizations understand and implement responsible AI practices. Recognizing the evolving nature of AI and the need for public debate, the guidelines were launched as ‘open beta’. The Digitalisation Agency is actively seeking feedback from academia, private sector, and other public entities to ensure that the guidelines stay relevant. This session will feature a presentation by Jens Andresen Osberg, a senior advisor, lawyer, and software developer from the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, who will provide an overview of the new guidelines.

Jens Andresen Osberg is a lawyer and software developer, and serves as a senior advisor at the National Resource Center for the Use and Sharing of Data under the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency. He is the author of a publication on the right of access of information on automated decisions under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Osberg holds a Master’s degree in Law and a Bachelor’s degree in Programming and Systems Architecture, both from the University of Oslo. Jens has worked extensively on Schrems II and cloud services and is currently leading the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency’s efforts on the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence.