On February 23 we welcomed Dr. Clara Neppel, Senior Director of the IEEE, in the context of the newly established Thursday Lunch Series here at the Weizenbaum Institute. Dr. Neppel gave a short talk titled „Digital Governance“ for our 12 participants, where she first spoke about herself and her career path leading her to IEEE. As a result, the participants gained insight into IEEE as an organization and the diverse work it is doing in advancing technology for humanity. With the current technological advancements we face very many ethical challenges, i.e. concerning the „Metaverse“, healthcare, mobility, and synthetic data. In relation to these risks, she also addressed the EU AI Act and other relevant digital policy developments in Europe and beyond.

Clara Neppel presented the portfolio of the IEEE Standards Association consisting of four pillars: standards, certification, training, and governance. They constitute an attempt to turn the implicit AI risks explicit and make them verifiable over the entire AI life cycle. She pointed out the wide range of work opportunities for our PhD candidates in a stringly interdisciplinary work context and demonstrated the importance of their work and research field. Clearly, future work opportunities outside academia are plentiful! Our researchers showed great interest in the event and asked Dr. Neppel questions about her work and her experiences.