Over the years I’ve been involved in various web site launches. The latest one, for the AI Assurance Club, feels special since I was closely involved with all of the content, and developed the site in SquareSpace. The new site brings together all the work of the Club since its inception in April 2022.

We began with a few dedicated web pages on the Global Digital Foundation web site, and launched with successful events in London in June and Berlin in July. It became clear that there was strong demand for an interdisciplinary community of professionals; a place where organisations’ programme managers, policy and legal professionals could meet with standards experts and regulators, and of course hear perspectives from civil society groups, parliamentarians and academics. The monthly newsletter launched in June and our membership grew quickly.

Realising the complexity and rate of change of AI regulation around the world, we set about producing the first AI Governance and Assurance Global Trends Report, published by the Global Digital Foundation in September 2022. We followed up with a hybrid round table event in Milan in November 2022. Here we heard from industrialists and academics how current and planned AI regulation impacts specific industries. Given my background, I was particularly interested in concerns about increased burdens on SMEs contributing to the AI value chain.

Later in November 2022, I participated (on behalf of the AI Assurance Club) in a larger event in Brussels run by Global Digital Foundation, focussing on the role of cybersecurity in Assured AI and Data Ecosystems. We heard from Brando Benifei MEP, co-rapporteur for the EU’s AI Act, about the risk to EU citizens from AI and the need to manage that risk through regulation. Once again I heard from SMEs and start-ups concerned about the possible burdens that AI regulation might impose, and came to understand how complex value chains need to be recognised and accommodated within the AI Act.

In March 2023 The AI Assurance Club ran a roundtable event in Copehagen, focussing on toolsets of all kinds that could provide frameworks to support AI governance and compliance with upcoming AI regulation. We announced our own initiative to create a Multi Actor Governance Framework, recognising the complexity of AI value chains, and acknowledging the need for standardisation of information sharing along the value chain.

Over the summer of 2023 the Club established an interdisciplinary working group drawn from members of organisations large and small. We met regularly to consider the challenges of operationalisation of AI regulation in real-world use cases. In January 2024 we were delighted to publish the results of our work as a white paper: MAGF – A Call and Proposal for Assurance Information Sharing Standards.

Launched in London in March 2024 and presented at our Brussels roundtable in April, MAGF has been described as “a fantastic idea” by Axel Voss MEP, and roundly welcomed by practitioners and experts within the AI ecosystem.

I also have a role within CEN CENELEC JTC21 working on the production of conformity standards to underpin the AI Act, and I was able to preset and contribute MAGF to Working Group 4 for JTC21.

I am delighted that our efforts relating to transparency through the value chain, and the need for frameworks to support information sharing, have increased recognition that the production and distribution of AI systems is complex and involves many actors. The later and final versions of the AI Act included several references to the AI value chain, including distribution of responsibilities between providers and deployers, and increased recognition of the need for cooperation and information sharing along the value chain.

Now, in September 2024, all the information relating to the the AI Assurance Club has been brought together into a dedicated web site at aiassuranceclub.org. It includes all our publications, newsletter archive and full events archive, together with latest announcements and upcoming events. There is a new membership section, showing graphically how our 300+ members are truly global, and widely interdisciplinary.

The last two years have been quite a journey, and that journey is not over yet!