1 year Civic AI Lab

The Civic AI Lab kicked-off exactly a year ago on the international human rights day, December 10. To celebrate this, we will share 10 highlights of our first year, reflecting the various ways in which we are contributing to science & society.

1. We have published & presented in various scientific journals & conference on FACT AI & related topics, including in PNAS special feature on Dynamics of Political Polarization, in the Artificial Intelligence Journal & at the International Conference on Machine Learning.

2. We have co-organized & participated in academic & non-academic workshops, panels & round tables locally, nationally & international, including the AI Bias for Beginners workshop & the International Fundamental Rights Forum 2021 panel on Civic Voice in AI regulation debate.

3. Our PhD students have started writing blog posts to explain & engage the general public about the motivation & goals of their research projects. For example on how AI can help tackle health inequality & mobility poverty.

4. We have supervised student research projects on fair, trustworthy and inclusive AI, and coordinated and taught courses on these topics in various bachelor and master programs, including the FACT-AI course of the MSc AI at the University of Amsterdam.

5. We have also started establishing education and training programs on practical aspects of AI for civil servants, policy makers, & the general public. We have contributed, for example, to the AI in Practice MOOC and to the new Ethics track of the online National AI-Cursus.

6. We have given many interviews on fair and inclusive AI to national and international media. In the Science Program Atlas, for example, we call for bottom-up democratization of AI by involving citizens & civil society in the AI-pipeline.

7. Our lab was distinguished with the Science Communication Award by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for the lab’s continued commitment to inform the general public about fair and inclusive AI.

8. Our lab members have received important personal awards and distinctions, including Top 200 most influential persons in the Netherlands, the Black Achievement Award, nominations to the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics.

9. We partook in several national committees and sounding boards, to give advice & consultation on the fair & inclusive use AI, for example to the Dutch Parliament (tax benefit scandal) & Dutch National Police (ethnic profiling in predictive policing).

10. We have started establishing and building on European consortia and initiatives focusing on innovative AI solutions & cocreations aimed at & responding to the needs of citizens & (hard to reach, marginalized).