Dear members of the European AI Alliance,

I am delighted to share with this continuously growing community that our AI expert group is actively building on the work we delivered so far. You may be aware that the European Commission is piloting the Assessment List that accompanies our Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. This process is important and we look forward to receiving the feedback from the wider ecosystem in December to revise the Assessment List accordingly (you can partake in the process here).

But our work does not end there. Let me remind you that we also delivered 33 recommendations in our report on Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy AI to the European Commission on the 26th of June, during our first European AI Alliance Assembly where many of you were present and kindly shared your expertise and point of view.

The Recommendations built on the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI with an aim to help materialise Europe’s competitiveness in light of Trustworthy AI, to harness the potential of AI while minimising its risks.

Our initial document covered four areas of impact for Europe:

1. Society
2. Private Sector
3. Public Sector
4. Research and Academic Community

And four enablers for Europe:

1. Data and Infrastructure
2. Skills and Education
3. Governance and Regulation
4. Funding and Investment.

Given AI’s context specificity, we are now exploring these initial areas of impact and enablers through a sectorial lense. In particular, the AI HLEG took the decision to focus on three areas that we strongly believe are of crucial importance to the sustained well-being of society and Europe’s global positioning with regard to AI.
The sectors we chose to explore are: (i) the Public Sector, (ii) Healthcare, (iii) Manufacturing and IoT.

(i) The Public Sector group  (lead by Leo Kärkkäinen and Françoise Soulié Fogelman)

(ii) The Healthcare Sector group (Lead to be clarified)

(iii) The Manufacturing and IoT sector group (lead by Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl)

This sectorial lense will allow us to provide specific guidance on the implementation of our recommendations and prove useful to the broader European AI ecosystem. A decision was taken during our last AI HLEG meeting (on the 5th November 2019) to host three workshops in the beginning of 2020, where relevant experts and representatives of entities within each ecosystem will be invited to participate and share their knowledge with our expert group. Above and beyond ensuring sector-specific recommendations by building on the community’s expertise, we desire to assist, support and strengthen the European Trustworthy AI ecosystem and all relevant players therein.

It is an exciting time to be part of this process and on behalf of all I look forward to receive your input on the Assessment List: a first opportunity to contribute towards the manifold workstreams we now established for our second term as experts on the AI High Level Expert Group and engage with us on pushing forwards with Trustworthy AI for Europe.

We look forward to your contributions.

Kind regards,

Pekka Ala-Pietilä