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Join Us Online: Register for The Sixth Edition of the Athens Roundtable

Our annual flagship event The Athens Roundtable is approaching soon on December 9, 2024. This year’s focus is on enhancing international coordination for accountability in AI governance. See our agenda.

Sessions will focus on mapping the emerging landscape of AI accountability and governance mechanisms, identifying key gaps and opportunities for international coordination, presenting takeaways from the global consultation for France’s AI Action Summit, and envisioning the role of civil society in global AI governance initiatives. Read more in a blog post on The OECD’s The AI Wonk.

Lightning talks will kick off each session, with speakers that include Co-Chair of the UN’s AI Advisory Board Carme Artigas, the OECD’s Deputy Secretary General Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen, Hellenic Minister of Digital Dimitris Papastergiou, European AI Office Director Lucilla Sioli, France’s AI Action Summit Secretary General Chloé Goupille, U.S. AI Safety Institute Executive Director Elizabeth Kelly, H.E. Rwanda’s Minister for ICT and Innovation Paula Ingabire, Anthropic Co-Founder and Head of Policy Jack Clark, Tsinghua University Professor Dr. Lan Xue, and UC Berkeley Professor Stuart Russell. See our participants list.

We invite our global community to join virtually via an interactive livestream of sessions from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CET.

This edition is organized by The Future Society in partnership with the OECD, UNESCO, France’s AI Action Summit, the AI & Society Institute, the French Digital Council (CNNum), Make_·org, and the Tech and Global Affairs Innovation Hub of Sciences Po, with support from Arnold & Porter and Fathom and under the patronage of H.E. the President of the Hellenic Republic Ms. Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

Interim Report on Our Consultation for France’s AI Action Summit

With France’s AI Action Summit in February 2025 set to be a significant milestone for AI governance, we are honored to have coordinated the public consultation for experts from civil society and academia to share their visions and concrete proposals for the Summit.

We published initial findings from 84 global experts who contributed to the first part of our open consultation for France’s 2025 AI Action Summit. Delivering Solutions: An Interim Report of Expert Insights for France’s 2025 AI Action Summit revealed four key shifts needed in AI governance and concrete recommendations for action.

We will share a full report of all 231 contributions to the consultation at The Athens Roundtable on December 9. This consultation is part of a wider effort to involve civil society and citizens in planning for the Summit, with the Tech and Global Affairs Innovation Hub of Sciences Po, AI & Society Institute, le Conseil National du Numérique (CNNUm), and Make_·org.

New Publication: Key Considerations for How the AI Safety Institute Network Can Advance Multilateral Collaboration

As members of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes meet this week in San Francisco, we published key insights on how the AISI Network can be structured and strategically integrated into the broader AI governance ecosystem to effectively fulfill its mandate toward secure, safe, and trustworthy AI.

Our report, Weaving a Safety Net, provides an analysis of the current state of collaboration between AISIs and other key multilateral institutions, and proposes concrete models and strategic directions for expanding its impact in addressing global AI challenges.

A companion blog post on the OECD’s The AI Wonk shares a succinct overview of the report’s key themes and recommendations.

Recently Published: Why does the GPAI Code of Practice matter to Europe and to the rest of the world – a boon for responsible AI innovation?

“As a major piece of legislation on AI with global significance, the EU AI Act is charting a new path forward for AI governance and innovation. The GPAI Code of Practice can showcase how intention becomes action.”

At the beginning of November, in an OpEd for Encompass, our Executive Director Nicolas Moës wrote about the Code of Practice for governing general-purpose AI through the groundbreaking EU AI Act. The first draft of the Code has since been published, which we hope will ultimately trigger a “Brussels Effect” for better AI innovation in the EU and beyond.

We are hiring

Senior Associate, AI Governance: We are seeking a driven and experienced professional with 6+ years of relevant experience for developing, advocating for, and/or implementing international AI policy and governance mechanisms. This role will monitor and assess the global AI governance landscape, design and lead high-impact AI policy recommendations, and engage a diverse network of stakeholders to champion these initiatives. Deadline: December 4, 2024

Our Recent and Upcoming Activities

Over the last two months, The Future Society Team participated in the following AI governance events:

• Paris Peace Forum and side events including those hosted by SciencesPo (Paris)
• Partnership on AI Roundtable on Alignment on EU Policy and the Global Network of Institutes (Paris)
• Barcelona Deep Tech Summit
• “Designing Effective AI Regulations in the Global South” workshop hosted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
• Roundtable launching CERRE’s paper on “AI Agents and Ecosystems Contestability” (Brussels)
• FTT AI Transformation Conference (London)
• “AI Opportunities: Accelerating AI for Good” hosted by the British Consulate General at GitHub, part of #SFTechWeek (San Francisco)
• “Silicon Dreams, European Realities: Charting the EU’s AI Industrial Policy Course to Avoid Slow Agony” (Brussels)
• “Aligning for Impact” Workshop (Brussels)
• AICon 2024 (Berlin)
• U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium’s Listening Session
• “Multi-stakeholder Collaboration for Responsible AI Development in Africa” by the African Observatory on Responsible Artificial Intelligence, MENA Observatory on Responsible AI, American University in Cairo and Global Center on AI Governance
• Mozilla’s “From Code to Conduct: Bringing training data transparency to AI”  (Brussels)

In the next month, we will take part in:

• “Standardising the Frontiers of AI Workshop” on November 25 (Oxford)
• OECD’s International Conference on AI in Work, Innovation, Productivity and Skills on December 12 (online)
• The Future Society’s Annual Flagship Event: The Athens Roundtable on AI and the Rule of Law on December 9 (OECD Headquarters, Paris, and online)

Let us know if you’ll be there too!

Support our work

The Future Society is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Philanthropy is what makes our work possible.

As we approach Giving Tuesday, we hope you will consider supporting our mission of aligning AI through better governance.