Policy Impact

Karen Yeung’s work on the governance of networked digital technologies is having significant impact in Europe and elsewhere. She currently serves as Special Advisor to the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights to support its inquiry into the regulation of AI and human rights. The EU High Level Expert Group’s Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, to which she contributed, is a leading reference point for identifying and understanding the norms to which ‘trustworthy’ AI systems must conform, including the need for these systems to be lawful, ethical and technically robust.

The report she produced for the Council of Europe, “Responsibility and AI” highlights how key characteristics of machine learning systems in contemporary society make them prone to undermining human rights while eroding democratic freedom, prompting important questions about responsibility for those impacts.

She supports policy-makers and civil society organisations in understanding how networked digital technologies may be wrongfully utilised, misused or may produce unintentional harms, and the kinds of guardrails needed to avoid these outcomes and to help ensure that they are developed and used responsibly.