How do we responsibly regulate AI?

Regine Paul

Regine's research focuses on comparative public policy governance, broadly situated in interpretive and critical policy analysis, inspired by constructivist political sociology, science and technology studies, as well as cultural political economy.

Regine explores how ideas, material structures, and power relations co-shape policy and regulation. Her empirical expertise is in migration and mobility governance, risk analysis and risk regulation, and the governance of and with artificial intelligence technologies. She is currently working on the monograph “The Global Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence” (with Daniel Mügge/Vali Stan @UvA, fc 2025) and on a series of papers on interaction and learning processes in Norway’s “responsible AI” regulatory sandbox (with Heidrun Åm @NTNU).

She is also Editor of Critical Policy Studies, the 2021 Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration (short promotional video here) and the 2024 Handbook on Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence (see open access introduction). She also published the monographs Varieties of Risk Analysis in Public Administrations. Problem-Solving and Polity Policies in Europe (short intro here) and The Political Economy of Border-Drawing which explains variation in labour migration governance in Europe.

Dag Elgesem

I have a background in philosophy, logic, and ethics - in particular ethical issues in research and information technology.

In the last few years I have focussed on methods for the anlaysis of how opinions spread over disital, social networks, and how these technologies affect democracy. This part of my research is concerned in particular on the study of how attitudes to climate change plays of over digital, social networks.

Current research interest: what are the possibilities for democratic control and regulation of AI – in particular thought the new AI Act.

Malgorzata Agnieszka Cyndecka

My research focuses on the EU/EEA law on State aid and data protection/General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

State aid law is part of EU/EEA competition law. It plays a crucial role in safeguarding the proper functioning of the internal market. Rules on State aid provide for a level playing field for all market operators (enterprises) in the Internal Market. Norway is well integrated in the EU’s Internal Market owing to the EEA Agreement of 1992. Rules on granting aid are very relevant in Norway where the public sector is entrusted with many tasks and public undertakings often compete with private ones. At the same time, Norway is known for using State aid law to grant “good aid” such as aid to protect environment, support regional development or finance research and innovation.

In 2016, my PhD thesis “The Applicability and Application of the Market Economy Investor Principle” won the European State Aid Law Quarterly PhD Award for the best PhD thesis in the field of EU/EEA State aid law written in the period 2012-2016. It was published by Kluwer Law International.

In 2019, I arranged a workshop where a group of distinguished experts discussed different issues related on the application of State aid law to taxation. The workshop was financed by UiB’s SPIRE Programme. More on the workshop.

In 2019, I was invited to take a position of Associate Editor of law journal European State Aid Law Quarterly (ESTAL), Lexxion, Berlin, the first pan-European publication for State aid law, recognized as the leading journal in its field today. I have special responsibility for reviewing and proposing scientific articles and case notes, contributing to the development of the Journal and its strategy, publishing scientific articles, editorials and case notes.

Data privacy and the General Data Protection Regulation is one of the fields of law that has massively gained in importance during the last years. The questions concerning the legality of processing of our personal data are being stated on a daily basis due to digitalisation of almost every single aspect of our life. Currently, I am working with amongst others data protection issues raised by using Artificial Intelligence to processing of personal data.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, I have been invited to join the University of Bergen’s Pandemic Centre as an expert in privacy/GDPR.

In 2021, I was a member of UiB’s Working Group – digital competence for UiB’s students. The Working group is led by prof. Barbara Wasson, Director for Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE) at UiB. The Working group’s task was to provide recommendations concerning both the form and contents of a course on Data literacy for all UiB’s students. The Working Group’s report led to creating six DIGI courses that are offered to all UiB students. In this respect, I have developned and I am co-supervising DIGI 113 Data protection and GDPR.

I participated and contributed with my knowledge on data protection and GDPR in one of the four pioneer projects that were admitted to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority’s (Datatilsynet) “Sandbox for responsible AI”. As Datatilsynet explained: “The Data Protection Authority has established a project environment for artificial intelligence that makes use of personal data — a sandbox. This regulatory sandbox provides free guidance to a handful of carefully selected companies, of varying types and sizes, across different sectors. The goal is to promote the development of innovative artificial intelligence solutions that, from a data protection perspective, are both ethical and responsible. The sandbox helps individual organizations ensure compliance with relevant regulations and the development of solutions that take privacy into account. We use examples and insights arising from sandbox projects to develop guidelines relevant for organizations implementing artificial intelligence and to further develop our own competence in this area”. For more information, see here. In the AVT the project designed by KS and SLATE, I analysed data protection challenges raised by processing personal data of pupils in Norwegian schools for the purpose of providing individualised teaching, which is pupils’ right under the Educational Act.

My work with learning analytics in the Sandbox was the reason why I was appointed a member of the Council Europe’s expert group “Artificial Intelligence and Eucation” in October 2022. The group is currently working on a resolution that is to be adopted by the CoE members in 2023. The resolution will be a basis for binding legal guidelines concerning using Artificial Intelligence in education.

As regards other projects involving AI, I participate in ENDO4P, a project led by the the Faculty of medicine at UiB. We are applying for funding from Horizon Europe to establish Centre for personalised systems medicine in edocrinology. Read more about the ENDO4P her.

From September 2022, I have been Associate professor II at the Facultty of Law at the University of Oslo where I contribute to The Clean Up Project, which is financed by the Norwegian Research Council. The Clean Up projecst stands for “Machine Learning for the Anonymisation of Unstructured Personal Data”.

Guilherme Cavalcante Silva

I am a PhD Candidate in Science and Technology Studies at York University, Canada. My PhD dissertation investigates how socioeconomic development is articulated in AI governance, with particular attention to the long-standing issue of technological dependency and how it permeates the articulation of AI futures for Brazil.

My current interests are in artificial intelligence, knowledge production, sociology of expectations, and science policy in the Global South. I am particularly interested in what informs policy makers’ understanding of AI and the frameworks used to trace future AI developments. I also work as an Assistant Editor for the Global South in the Portal Backchannels (Society for the Social Studies of Science/4S).