Artificial intelligence has attracted growing interest from businesses and the general public in recent years. While it has undeniable potential to improve many aspects of our everyday lives, its gradual adoption by society also brings new risks and challenges that must be addressed to fully reap its benefits. In this context, multiple initiatives are being put into place to better oversee the technology. As the European Commission makes progress in defining a legal framework for reliable and ethical artificial intelligence, technical standardization can support this approach by identifying and describing good practices for the technology’s use.

To highlight the role that technical standardization plays in the adoption of artificial intelligence, ILNAS has prepared a new white paper entitled “Artificial Intelligence – Technology, Use Cases and Applications, Trustworthiness and Technical Standardization”. Discover more about this publication in the video below!

The white paper describes key concepts to understand the technology and its challenges in an accessible way. Technical standardization is used as Ariadne’s thread to present and address these challenges throughout the document.

Artificial intelligence is introduced through four complementary facets:

• A presentation of the historical and current context. This chapter explains the growing enthusiasm around artificial intelligence and provides an overview of the related standards developments in Europe and around the world.
• A technical introduction specifying the fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence. This chapter provides a link between technical concepts and business use cases. It considers three main branches of artificial intelligence – searching, reasoning and machine learning – with a particular emphasis on machine learning. It also introduces the technical standards that help to understand these concepts and make the right technological choices.
• An analysis of the application domains of artificial intelligence. Different application domains of artificial intelligence are presented, and put in the context of the economic impact in Europe and worldwide, in terms of both investments and expected benefits. The chapter focuses on the healthcare sector, banking and finance, industry, the transportation and automotive sector, commerce, and the public sector. Domain-specific and general-purpose standards are introduced to refer the reader to relevant information that can aid in the adoption of artificial intelligence.
• An overview of artificial intelligence trustworthiness issues. The chapter describes the complex ecosystem of components that help build trust across all aspects of the implementation of artificial intelligence. Standards are presented as useful tools providing mitigation measures to address trust-related challenges.

Aware of the challenges related to the field of artificial intelligence and the interest it arouses at the national level, ILNAS has been following the related standardization projects since their beginning in 2017. The technical standards currently in development will offer useful good practices to all the stakeholders involved in the implementation of artificial intelligence. Through this white paper, ILNAS offers an overview of the concepts and challenges related to the technology and connects these with the field’s standards landscape, in the interest of the national economy. This allows readers to seize the opportunities of not only using these technical standards, but also of being involved in the development process of future international and European standards by becoming national standardization delegates.

The white paper “Artificial Intelligence – Technology, Use Cases and Applications, Trustworthiness and Technical Standardization” is available online. For any questions or comments about this document, you can contact us directly at the following address: info@ilnas.etat.lu.

In line with the continuous improvement policy of ILNAS, a version 1.1 of the white paper was put online on February 8, 2021. 

For more information:

• White paper ILNAS « Artificial Intelligence – Technology, Use Cases and Applications, Trustworthiness and Technical Standardization »
• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 National Mirror Committee
• Participate in standards development
• National standards delegates registry