From April 8-12th, the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), in collaboration with the ADAPT Centre, organised a global forum to discuss the standardisation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Called SC42, it was the first-ever global plenary meeting to take place in Europe to discuss the trustworthiness of AI.

More than 150 of the world’s leading experts in AI from 22 countries gathered in Dublin to participate in this meeting with the hopes of establishing global standards for the development of technology in this field.

Within this context, the ADAPT Centre ELITE-S Fellowship Programme in partnership with StandICT.eu, carried out a "Breakfast seminar" on ICT Standards. This workshop was the opportunity to provide a place to meet with researchers at the forefront of this field and understand how the ELITE-S Fellowship Programme can work for the ICT Standards community as well as the possibility to receive financial support to carry out Standardisartion activities in the framework of the StandICT.eu initiative.

The Seminar boasted the presentation of three cases coming from the industry world, in order to deliver a first-hand experience on “how the AI technology jigsaw will perfectly fit and serve the new industrial revolution”. Specifically, the event hosted:

• Terry Landers, Regional Standards Officer EMEA at Microsoft
• Michael Mouire, Head of Data & Analytics at Ryanair
• Katherine O’Keefe, Researcher at Castelbridge

Several panel and interactive discussion took place with the following takeaways to be pointed out:

• Working for a joint development of international standards will facilitate AI deployment and acceptance
• Standardisation will also be critical for the development of AI in the Digital Single Market, helping considerably to ensure interoperability
• The European AI Alliance will back up by high-level expert group on AI and an online platform
• A plan to build up an European AI ecosystem which is linking to already existing initiatives (AI4EU, COVER, ICT Rolling plan for Standardisation, StandICT.eu etc..)

Mr. Wael William Diab, Chair of the JTC SC42 on Artificial Intelligence stressed in his opening statement “ ..the importance to continue to build the ecosystem via tools like liaisons but also continue to look for areas of collaboration with other groups and organizations especially with ISO, IEC and JTC 1 committees in an effort to provide guidance on the application of AI, while continuing to execute on and grow the work program as well as bringing in different stakeholders views”.