MEPs meet at the headquarters of ELLIS Alicante to analyse the European regulation on Artificial Intelligence
Rebeca de Miguel
Head of Operations of ELLIS Alicante
A delegation of MEPs from the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament meets with researchers from ELLIS Alicante. Aspects of the implementation of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act such as security and good practices were analysed.
The European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) met yesterday with ELLIS Alicante – the Institute for the Development of Humanity-Centric Artificial Intelligence – to learn first-hand about the research on the ethical and social aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that it carries out.
The working session was attended by MEPs Ilhan Kyuchyuk, from the Renew Europe group and President of the JURI Commission, Maravillas Abadía Jover, from the European People’s Party group and Leire Pajín, from the European Socialist Party group, as well as the policy advisor Vadim Polestsuk, from the Renew Europe group. Law professors, Manuel Desantes and Aurelio Lopez Tarruella, as well as Assistant Professor Raúl Ruiz Rodríguez, all of the University of Alicante, as well as Martin Ebers, president of the Robotics & AI Law Society – RAILS, also participated. This is the second visit of the JURI Commission to Alicante’s scientific foundation. The first was held in February 2023.
The cutting-edge research in Artificial Intelligence for Social Good carried out by ELLIS Alicante is in the sights of the European Parliament, which seeks to balance the risks and benefits of Artificial Intelligence through regulation, which began in April 2021 with the formulation of what is known as the Artificial Intelligence Act or AI Act, adopted in March 2024. The objective of the MEPs is to collect updated information on the state of the art and perspectives of the research carried out by ELLIS Alicante, highlighting the value of responsible AI that guarantees European values. The ultimate objective of the JURI is to establish a legal framework to foster the development and use of AI in the European Union, ensuring that it is used ethically, safely and in a way that respects fundamental human rights.
The meeting began with a presentation by Nuria Oliver, director of ELLIS Alicante and vice-president of ELLIS Europe (www.ellis.eu), the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, on both initiatives. After, the meeting revolved around the implementation of the AI Act, and specifically on the Security Report and the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, in the process of being prepared in the European Parliament. Both are instruments that develop the general standards outlined in the AI Act, to provide the right tools to identify and manage AI opportunities and threats.
The scientific team at ELLIS Alicante is currently working on different AI research projects that address ethical challenges related to the functioning of algorithms that already impact our daily lives. Among others, challenges related to discrimination and algorithmic biases, the invasion of our privacy, distrust in opaque automated systems, human cognitive biases transferred to AI, the subliminal influence on human behaviour, the impact of beautification filters used on social platforms or algorithmic censorship, which restricts access to information, among others.
For more information about ELLIS Alicante’s research activities, please visit ELLIS Alicante.