On 16 September, 2022, Patrick Penninckx, Head of the Information Society Department, presented the Council of Europe work on Artificial Intelligence at Leuven University.

The Summer School on the Law, Ethics and Policy of AI aimed to provide participants with a better understanding of AI governance initiatives by organisations beyond the European Union, featuring the following topics:

• Council of Europe work on AI, focusing particularly on the CAI and its timeline
• OECD work regarding trustworthy AI & AI classification
• UNESCO Ethics Recommendation and initiatives around AI and the judiciary/parliament/civil service

Patrick Penninckx underlined the pioneering role of the Council of Europe in the field of AI regulation and the specific mandate of the Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) to elaborate potential elements, on the basis of broad multi-stakeholder consultations, of a legal framework for the development, design and application of artificial intelligence, based on Council of Europe’s standards on human rights, democracy and the rule of law. He described the current state of cooperation with multiple stakeholders and outlined the new legal instrument in elaboration, indicating that the new instrument has the potential to become a global standard, like the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime.