ON EU’s plans for a scientific panel of independent experts

by: Virginia Dignum and Maja Fjaestad

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act envisages the establishment of a scientific panel of independent experts to advise on, and assist the AI Office and national market surveillance authorities with, implementing and enforcing the AI Act. The Commission is currently seeking public for input on implementing regulation establishing a scientific panel of independent experts. Here is our response to this request

The AI Policy Lab welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the European Commission’s draft regulation establishing a scientific panel of independent experts in artificial intelligence. This initiative is crucial in ensuring robust, transparent, and impartial oversight of AI systems, aligning with EU objectives to foster innovation while safeguarding fundamental rights. We commend the Commission’s focus on multidisciplinary expertise, diversity, and transparency in panel operations. However, to enhance effectiveness, we offer recommendations to streamline procedural workflows and strengthen data security protocols, ensuring the panel’s structure fully supports its mission in this rapidly evolving field.

Strong Points

We commend key features of the proposal that strengthen the panel’s credibility, flexibility, and proactive oversight:

• Transparency and Conflict of Interest: Requirements for experts to make declarations of interest and to act in the public interest enhance the panel’s credibility and independence
• Flexible Structure for Task Allocation: The document enables adaptability by allowing specific members to serve as rapporteurs for individual tasks, ensuring expertise aligns with task requirements​
• Qualified Alerts for AI Risks: The ability of the scientific panel to issue qualified alerts to the AI Office is an innovative mechanism for highlighting potential AI risks.

Recommendations

Several areas for improvement could enhance efficiency, security, and impartiality in the panel’s operations. In particular, we suggest to address the following issues:

• Complex Bureaucracy: The involvement of multiple administrative bodies, such as the AI Office, Joint Research Centre, and the Commission, could introduce delays and administrative bottlenecks in the panel’s operations. Streamlined procedural workflows and clarified responsibilities for each entity could enhance the panel’s responsiveness and effectiveness in providing timely guidance.
• Strengthening Data Security and Confidentiality Measures: Although confidentiality is mentioned, the document could benefit from more detailed procedures on data handling to further mitigate risk related to data security​. Adding explicit guidelines for the secure storage, sharing, and destruction of sensitive information would strengthen the protocol for data handling, especially in cases involving sensitive AI data
• Enhancing Panel Independence through Conflict of Interest Protocols: While the requirement for declarations of interest is a positive step, more rigorous conflict of interest safeguards—such as independent audits or periodic reviews—could reinforce the panel’s impartiality, especially given the rapidly evolving nature of AI and potential industry influences.
• Streamline Procedural Steps: Simplifying interactions between the AI Office, Joint Research Centre, and the Commission could enhance efficiency without compromising oversight.
• Equitable selection criteria: Equality is crucial to guarantee diverse input, to have democratic legitimacy, and to avoid bias. Article 3, par 5, Selection criteria and composition of the scientific panel would therefore benefit from a clearer formalation: Instead of “The Commission shall aim to ensure gender balance” a better formulation could be “the commission shall ensure gender balance”. 
• Multidisciplinary relevance: The importance of humanities and social sciences expertise should be emphasized. For instance, in Article 3, paragraph 3, by removing “scientific or technical expertise” would broaden the focus, avoiding an unnecessary bias toward natural sciences and valuing multidisciplinary insights on rights, equality, and ethics in AI.

Proposals for consideration

Additional measures could increase the panel’s adaptability, responsiveness, and independence in handling evolving AI challenges, as follows:

• To maintain the panel’s relevance across rapidly evolving AI fields, we propose supplementing the core panel with a flexible pool of specialized experts. These “on-call” experts would offer guidance on niche areas like ethical AI, quantum AI, or specific sectoral applications, allowing the panel to draw on targeted expertise without permanently expanding its membership.
• Recognizing the potential risks posed by high-stakes AI applications, we recommend a dedicated Rapid Response Protocol within the panel. This would enable the panel to perform expedited assessments of AI models flagged as potentially harmful, particularly those impacting public safety or fundamental rights, ensuring that urgent cases receive timely and focused attention.
• To safeguard the panel’s impartiality, we suggest enhanced conflict of interest protocols, including independent audits or periodic reviews of expert affiliations and potential biases. This would reinforce trust in the panel’s independence, especially important given AI’s sensitive and influential role across industries.
• To promote transparency and public trust, the panel could introduce an AI Accountability Dashboard that provides the public with non-sensitive summaries of decisions, recommendations, and qualified alerts issued by the panel. This dashboard could track metrics like panel activity levels, time-to-decision for urgent alerts, and diversity statistics, thus allowing stakeholders to observe the panel’s impact on AI governance.