The Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Artificial Intelligence for European Integration aims to promote the study on European integration and governance with a focus on AI. The Centre brings together a group of multidisciplinary experts in European studies in order to conduct multidisciplinary research on the impact of AI on the European integration process on the basis of the experience gained from the activities carried out by the Jean Monnet Chair.
The Centre's activities cover research and training.
Research ⇒ analyses the relationship between AI and the European Union by measuring the impact of AI on some areas of European political and social life with respect to some specific topics (ethics and rights, democracy and political systems, security and defence, linguistic rights and language varieties, information and communication).
Training ⇒ intends to equip students, young professionals and policy-makers with tools they need to understand AI-European Integration interaction and enhance their civic skills, governance of European Union policies and create widespread European civic awareness, aimed at seizing the opportunities of AI in a critical way that fosters European integration.
The centre has established six research groups.
- Linguistics ⇒ The first group deals with today's topic. i.e. it studies the possible consequences of AI in reducing linguistic diversity. It is undisputed that AI is central to the language industry (machine translation, Computer Assisted Translation tools, bi- and multilingual concordance software, etc.) and that it will be increasingly used in language teaching and will become more integrated into devices that enable digital writing (e.g. smart writing). It is therefore essential to consider how AI can safeguard multilingualism. (Rachele Raus)
- Democracy and political systems ⇒ The group follows two lines of research. On the one hand, the historical reconstruction of the growing interest of European institutions in digital networks, robotics and AI. On the other hand, the effects of digitization on the theory of democracy, on Euro-Western democratic systems and on the prospects of democratization of the European Union. (Corrado Malandrino, Stefano Quirico, Filippo Giordano, Giuseppe Sciara)
- Information and communication⇒ As decision-making and policy changes are increasingly influenced by data sets and guided by algorithms and technologies, another group studies the impact of AI on the way public and private decisions are made, on human rights consequences, on implications for daily life, and on the discriminatory effects of machine learning on the basis of gender, ethnicity, age, and religion. (Marinella Belluati, Mia Caielli, Cristopher Cepernich)
- Law ⇒ A group studies the impact of AI on the world of law in order to ensure an ‘adequate level of protection of personal data and individual rights. This framework is essential for the very development of technological innovation, the free movement of data, the security of commercial transactions and the progressive affirmation of the digital single market. (Massimo Durante, Ugo Pagallo)
- Cyber defence ⇒ Another group addresses the issue of cyber defence. AI is set to revolutionize warfare more than any other technological invention. In cyber warfare, human judgment and decision-making are replaced with the automatism of machines, which prove to be more efficient. But what ethical, legal, political problems can this reality generate? What will it entail in the military and what effects will the dehumanization of the use of AI-driven weapons have on democratic systems? (Umberto Morelli)
- EU and AI in the UN ⇒ Finally, a sixth group analyses the behaviour of the European Union and its member states in the most relevant UN bodies with regard to AI. The analysis aims to assess how AI has gained relevance on the international agenda and whether in the European Union and the UN it is still a controversial issue or a consensus on its use is developing. (Paolo Caraffini, Giovanni Finizio, Andrea Cofelice)
The activity of the Centre will culminate with the establishment by 2023 of an observatory on AI and European integration aimed at providing students, professionals, policy makers and the public with the tools to understand the relationship between AI and European integration, to improve knowledge on the governance of European policies, to increase levels of public confidence in new technologies, to create a widespread European civic awareness aimed at seizing the opportunities of AI to foster European integration.