Webinar: Standing up for safeguards

Join the European AI & Society Fund in collaboration with Ariadne Network at our next Funders’ Briefing, Thursday 19 February at 2pm CET on “Standing up for safeguards: how civil society is resisting Europe’s tech regulation rollback”. 

Late last year, the European Commission unveiled the Digital Omnibus, a proposal to rewrite existing digital regulation, including the European AI Act and the GDPR. The stated goal is to boost competitiveness through simplified rules for businesses, but constitutes, in the view of some groups, “the most extraordinary reversal of digital rights in a generation”. Changes could allow high-risk AI in areas such as education, employment, the administration of justice and the democratic process, to avoid legal checks without any public scrutiny. It would also free up companies to use people’s personal data to train large language models without expressly gaining their consent. 

In this Funders’ Briefing we’ll hear from two members of the European AI & Society Fund’s community about what’s at stake, what they are up against, and how they and the wider public interest community are mobilising to stand up for people’s rights in the face of these planned changes to public protections.  

Ella Jakubowska leads the policy team at European Digital Rights (EDRi),  working to tackle disproportionate state surveillance, hold platforms to account, and push for meaningful, human rights-centric tech regulation.  

Julia Smakman is a Senior Researcher in the Law & Policy team at the Ada Lovelace Institute. Her research focuses on the effective governance of AI, both in the UK and EU. Julia’s recent projects have focused on liability for AI harms and risks stemming from Advanced AI Assistants, including AI agents and AI companions. 

Please note this event is intended for people working in grantmaking organisations only. Please email peggye.totozafy@europeanaifund.org with your name and the organisation you work for and we will share the registration link.