Voted by the European Parliament in June 2023, the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) could become a global standard. The First University of Saint Gallen Grand Challenge: The EU AI ACT, a competition in the field of law and AI, was therefore organised to assess compliance of current and upcoming AI technologies in a variety of fields, including healthcare, disaster relief, telecommunication, and manufacturing with the upcoming EU AI Act.
Twelve international teams participated in the competition to present the best assessment report in front of an international jury, and for a chance to win a 100,000 CHF prize.
Yasaman Yousefi, a doctoral candidate of the University of Luxembourg (PhD supervisor Prof. Christoph Schommer, Department of Computer Science), and University of Bologna (PhD supervisors: Prof. Monica Palmirani and Prof. Silvia Zullo), doing a Joint International Doctoral Degree in Law, Science and Technology, participated in the challenge as part of the LegalAIzers team. The team emerged victorious at the finals on 18-19 July 2023, sharing the prize with co-winners of the challenge, the Conformity Mavericks team (Mario Lopez de Avila and Marcos García-Caravantes, Asociación Española de Inteligencia Artificial Responsible – AEINAR ; Carolina Pina and Marta Valero, Garrigues). “I am truly grateful for this incredible experience”, said Yasaman Yousefi. “We started the journey months ago with our weekly remote meetings that led to a solid conformity assessment approach under the AI Act. We met brilliant people from around the world in the process and learned valuable lessons.”
Photo: LegalAIzers from left to right: Yasaman Yousefi, University of Luxembourg and University of Bologna; Dirk Brand, Stellenbosch University; Kholofelo Kugler, University of Lucerne; Emmie Hine, University of Bologna; Pier Giorgio Chiara, University of Luxembourg and University of Bologna; Parisa Osivand, University of Toronto. (Photo credits: Darya Shramko).