Chiara Ullstein

Participatory Auditing (in cooperation with Audit.EU)

The EU AI Act posits that providers (management and developers) of high-risk AI systems have to undergo conformity assessment. The conformity assessment encompasses several measures that are supposed to corroborate that a system is legally compliant, technically robust, and ethically sound, and can be considered ‘trustworthy AI’. The project ‘participatory auditing’ aims to contribute to the project Audit.EU (1) by exploring how companies can leverage their learnings from established compliance practices such as for the GDPR and (2) by proposing participation as an approach to source AI Act compliance-relevant information from suitable stakeholders to increase inclusivity and mitigate risks of discrimination. Participation is considered to enhance the process of achieving compliance through a comprehensive testing and feedback process. Based on learnings from established compliance measures, a framework for performing auditing in a participatory manner and in accordance with the EU AI Act will be developed and evaluated. The primary goal of the framework is to serve developer teams as a guideline.