AI-innovation in Europe lags behind the US and China. To catch up and ensure pro-European outcomes, AI-regulation constitutes the EU’s main channel to shape the future of AI-development globally. This project will support European regulators and policy makers with knowledge and tools to adequately address challenges and opportunities of trustworthy and ethical AI and to develop and enforce effective regulation of AI based on human rights, European values, and citizens' needs. AI4POL will explore how regulators can use data science and AI-driven tools to improve monitoring and enforcement of regulations such as the Data Act, the Digital Markets Act, the AI Act and in consumer law. To this end, we will focus on a key innovation area, financial services, and how to increase AI-enhanced understanding and citizen feedback for the informed regulation of digital services by developing a large language model for legal jargon translation and a browser-plugin for user feedback about their understanding of laws. We will also analyze how to create and regulate trustworthy AI for financial services, for example with robo-advisors or credit scoring. Taking a long-term, geopolitical perspective, we will develop an early-warning system regarding high-risk AI in autocratic states, including the development of an AI Threat Index and dashboard and piloted with the cases of China and Russia. AI4POL pursues these objectives with a multidisciplinary, diverse research team, combining substantive expertise in AI/data science, ethics, law, economics, and political science with project management resilience, quality assurance and timeline monitoring, and risk-based intervention plans. The consortium has extensive experience in advising policy makers and has reliable contacts to various stakeholders, evidenced by AI4POL’s Advisory Board comprising EU- and national regulators and policy makers, consumer protection agencies, civil society organizations, and AI-firms.

This proposal outlines a detailed plan for ensuring the sustainability of one of Europe’s leading social science research infrastructures - the European Social Survey, European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS ERIC). As a comparative general social survey the ESS needs to have generous national coverage to provide analytical power and ensure it keeps up with the changing scientific and research infrastructure landscape. Failure in one or more of these areas could damage or even destroy the infrastructure. This grant will substantially reduce the risk by securing the medium-term sustainability of the infrastructure and making it more resilient towards future challenges. The ESS has responded effectively to the ESFRI approach since it became an ERIC in 2013 and receives sizeable financial contributions from its members for core activities. ESS-SUSTAIN-2 aims to build on that support and creates sustainability through a structural strengthening of the ESS and by future proofing the infrastructure. ESS is not seeking another few years Commission funding to keep it afloat, an approach unlikely to yield long-term sustainability (and in any event these costs are now met by ERIC members). Rather it seeks a vital helping hand to help complete the transition of the ESS into a research infrastructure that is financially sound and scientifically equipped for the future. By developing links with the European Values Survey, establishing global partners, engaging with policy makers, harnessing technology to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness and launching the world’s first probability-based online panel, this proposal aims to give the European Social Survey the strongest possible foundation to succeed in the years ahead.