Last days I have been researching the European draft law on artificial intelligence. I am not an expert on AI, but I do know a thing or two about standards, and standard-setting features prominently in this act!
What the European Commission proposes is that standards will be created for AI by European Standards Organisations. AI implementations that are compliant with the standards are legal in the EU.
There are only three European Standards Organisations, namely CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI. AI standards-setting would probably take place within CEN/CENELEC's Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 21 ‘Artificial Intelligence’.
In this work, I examine the role of norms in the governance of the Internet infrastructure.
Based on extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of different Internet governance bodies, namely @ICANN, @ietf, and @ripencc, I developed a theory.
Norms only get introduced and maintained in the governance of the Internet infrastructure if they: 1) Are translated to the social worlds of the significantly represented groups 2) Increase voluntary interconnection and interoperation between independents networks.
Another new draft in response to the discussion of the removal of racist language in the IETF.
This new draft practically says: when there is contention about whether a concept is racist or not, the IETF should err on the side of racism and the status quo.
The draft asserts that this would be to the benefit of the Internet community.
It also continues to state that removing racist language might be too much work, and would not really contribute much. It's more important to not disrupt the current ways of working.
Also, the draft says that no one should be forced to remove racists language because, again, it would disrupt normal work.
When @MalloryKnodel and I started this work, we thought removing racist language would be kind of a no-brainer.
I think a European normative technical system should seek to leverage the human right to science and with that overcome the patents and copyrights of the infrastructure of the information society.
This would leverage the knowledge production of universities, and re-involve public research institutions with the development of the Internet as public utility.