The lecture will focus on the development of an EU governance framework in the field of AI with a particular focus on its legal and ethical aspects including the proposed AI Act. It will discuss EU’s Trustworthy approach to AI and whether the pervasive, growing and transformative character of these technologies fits well with the established EU institutional and legal acquis. It will also shed light on the importance of establishing a distinct Ethics organizational/conceptual approach to enable the development of a human-centric and robust digital research ecosystem. Given the novelty of this set of technologies from a research ethics governance perspective, the lecture will discuss the particular needs for guidance, education, training and development of expertise. Particular attention will be given to the ongoing international initiatives in the domain of AI including the Hiroshima AI Process, the Convention on AI and human rights, democracy and the rule of law and UNESCO’s Recommendation on the ethics of AI.

Dr Kritikos is a Policy Analyst at the Ethics and Integrity Sector of the European Commission (DG Research and Innovation) working on the ethical development of emerging technologies with a special emphasis on AI Ethics.  Before that, he worked at the Scientific Foresight Service of the European Parliament as a legal/ethics advisor on Science and Technology issues (STOA/EPRS) authoring more than 50 publications (including 2 books) in the domain of new and emerging technologies and contributing to the drafting of more than 15 European Parliament reports/resolutions in the fields of artificial intelligence, robots, distributed ledger technologies and blockchains, precision farming, gene editing and disruptive innovation. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Brussels School of Governance and at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) working on digital ethics and rights, digital transition, AI Governance and Values and responsible innovation.  He has worked as a Senior Associate in the EU Regulatory and Environment Affairs Department of White and Case, as a Lecturer at several UK Universities and as a Lecturer/Project Leader at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).  He also taught EU Law and Institutions for several years at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he obtained a PhD in Technology Law (London School of Economics LSE) that earned him the UACES Prize for the Best Thesis in European Studies in Europe.