New Governance and Inclusiveness in AI Standardisation – How Far Have We Gone?

AI standards will play a key role in AI governance in Europe and beyond. But who is governing standardization? AI standardization is often mentioned as a test case for better inclusiveness in the drafting of standards. Firstly, the European Commission explicitly requested CEN and CENELEC to include actions to facilitate an appropriate representation and effective participation of societal stakeholders in their work program. Secondly, the corresponding AI technical body (JTC 21) hosts a task group on inclusiveness, whose main objective is precisely to encourage the participation of a wide range of stakeholders in AI standardization. This panel will review what the impact of these measures has been, what has been achieved so far and identify the challenges that are still faced by civil society as well as standardization governance itself.

• On a scale from 1 to 5, how inclusive has the standardisation of AI systems become?
• Which inclusiveness actions have worked, and which could be done better?
• Should we replicate what has been done for AI standardisation in other fields?
• Is the current governance model of the European Standardisation System a barrier to more societal representativeness?