As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies continue to advance, protecting human autonomy and promoting ethical decision-making are essential to fostering trust and accountability. Human agency (the capacity of individuals to make informed decisions) should be actively preserved and reinforced by AI systems. This paper examines strategies for designing AI systems that uphold fundamental rights, strengthen human agency, and embed effective human oversight mechanisms. It discusses key oversight models, including Human-in-Command (HIC), Human-in-the-Loop (HITL), and Human-on-the-Loop (HOTL), and proposes a risk-based framework to guide the implementation of these mechanisms. By linking the level of AI model risk to the appropriate form of human oversight, the paper underscores the critical role of human involvement in the responsible deployment of AI, balancing technological innovation with the protection of individual values and rights. In doing so, it aims to ensure that AI technologies are used responsibly, safeguarding individual autonomy while maximizing societal benefits.
Category: 3/ Type
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Generative AI and the Future of News: Examining AI’s Agency, Power, and Authority
This special issue interrogates how artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI (GenAI), is reshaping journalism at a moment of profound uncertainty for the profession. The rapid rise of GenAI technologies, particularly following the release of tools like ChatGPT, has intensified longstanding tensions between economic precarity, technological innovation, and journalistic values. Across diverse contexts in the Global North and South, articles examine how AI is simultaneously heralded as a source of efficiency, personalization, and newsroom survival, while also feared as a destabilizing force that threatens jobs, erodes professional norms, and concentrates power in the hands of technology corporations.
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Obama Foundation Fellow: Victoria Kuketz
We are proud to announce Aula Fellow’s Victoria Kuketz’s recent appointment as an Obama Fellow. Follow Victoria for news of her Fellowship this year, where she will be concentrating on inclusion and rational governance.
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Oui, mais je LLM !
L’IA générative nous joue des tours, en manipulant notre perception de la vérité en tentant de devenir notre confident et en créant une relation de dépendance. Mais, on peut aussi à notre tour l’utiliser pour extraire des informations privilégiées mal sécurisées, en utilisant des tactiques adaptées de l’ingénierie sociale.
Le manque d’expérience autour de cette technologie et l’empressement à en mettre partout expose à de nouveaux risques.
Je te présente un survol des concepts de base en cybersécurité revisités pour l’IA générative, différents risques que posent ces algorithmes et différents conseils de prévention pour bien les intégrer dans nos systèmes informatiques et notre pratique professionnelle.
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West Island Women’s Center
Presenting a workshop on navigating the hard and strange questions on AI in society and in our lives.
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The Architecture of Responsible AI: Balancing Innovation and Accountability
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a key factor driving change in industries, organizations, and society. While technological capabilities advance rapidly, the mechanisms guiding AI implementation reveal critical structural flaws (Closing the AI accountability gap). There lies an opportunity to architect a future where we can collaboratively design systems that leverage AI to augment human capabilities while upholding ethical integrity.
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The EU AI Act – Enabling the Next Generation Internet (NGI).
How the pioneering AI law enables the NGI’s aim of establishing key technological building blocks of tomorrow’s Internet and shaping the future Internet as an interoperable platform ecosystem that embodies the values that Europe holds dear: openness, inclusivity, transparency, privacy, cooperation, and protection of data.
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Dis/Misinformation, WhatsApp Groups, and Informal Fact-Checking Practices in Namibia
This chapter contributes to our understanding of organic and informal user correction practices emerging in WhatsApp groups in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. This is important in a context where formal infrastructures of correcting and debunking dis/misinformation have been dominated by top-down initiatives. These formal infrastructures include platform-centric content moderation practices and professional fact-checking processes. Unlike social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which can perform content moderation and hence take down offending content, the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) infrastructure of WhatsApp creates a very different scenario where the same approach is not possible. This is because only the users involved in the conversation have access to the content shared, shielding false and abusive content from being detected or removed. As Kuru et al.(2022) opine, the privacy of end-to-end encryption provides a highly closed communication space, posing a different set of challenges for misinformation detection and intervention than with more open social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. In this regard, false and misleading information on WhatsApp constitutes” a distinctive problem”(Kuru et al. 2022; Melo et al. 2020). As Reis et al.(2020, 2) observe,“the end-to-end en-crypted (E2EE) structure of WhatsApp creates a very different scenario” where content moderation and fact checking at scale is not possible. Fact-checking WhatsApp groups, which have been flagged as the major distributors of mis-and disinformation is equally difficult.
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Canary in the Mine: An LLM Augmented Survey of Disciplinary Complaints to the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ) (Peer Reviewed)
This study investigates disciplinary incidents involving engineers in Quebec, shedding light on critical gaps in engineering education. Through a comprehensive review of the disciplinary register of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ)’s disciplinary register for 2010 to 2024, researchers from engineering education and human resources management in technological development laboratories conducted a thematic analysis of reported incidents to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. The analysis aims to uncover the most common types of disciplinary incidents, underlying causes, and implications for the field in how engineering education addresses (or fails to address) these issues. Our findings identify recurring themes, analyze root causes, and offer recommendations for engineering educators and students to mitigate similar incidents. This research has implications for informing curriculum development, professional development, and performance evaluation, ultimately fostering a culture of professionalism and ethical responsibility in engineering. By providing empirical evidence of disciplinary incidents and their causes, this study contributes to evidence-based practices for engineering education and professional development, enhancing the engineering education community’s understanding of professionalism and ethics.
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Developing the Permanent Symposium on AI (poster): Presented at Engineering and Public Policy Division (EPP) Poster Session
A multidisciplinary, reflective autoethnography by some of the people who are building the Permanent Symposium on AI. Includes the history of the project.
RQ 1: Challenges that unite AI policy & tech
RQ 2: How to design the PSAI?
RQ 3: What factors influence the adoption and scalability of the PSAI?
This is the Flagship project of the Aula Fellowship.
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Keeping Players Hooked: Story-Driven iGaming Ecosystem
This GitHub project explores how to:
✅ Build modular narrative systems that expand over seasons and quests. ✅ Design story-powered payment systems that turn transactions into experiences. ✅ Grow sustainable gaming enterprises around live storytelling, community co-creation, and ethical monetization. ✅ Create ecosystems where players return not out of compulsion, but love for the story.
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Nature Opinion: The path for AI in poor nations does not need to be paved with billions
NATURE
Researchers in low- and middle-income countries show that home-grown artificial-intelligence technologies can be developed, even without large external investments.