Artificial intelligence meets safety and health at work

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is deeply impacting companies today. In order to highlight the impact of AI on occupational safety and health, the European OSH standardisation network EUROSHNET dedicated its 7th European conference in Paris to this issue.

Experts defined the concept of AI, specify the different technologies and the different sectors concerned.

The safe use of AI in parallel with human activities raises questions of confidence, control, ethics, legal responsibility and technical reliability. To successfully introduce an AI system, it is also necessary to analyse the potential consequences on the health and safety of workers. These questions have consequences at regulation level and standardisation is a powerful tool to address some of them. 

Presentations : 

• Session 1 : What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Where is it found?

  • Foundations, Methods and Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Raja Chatila, Sorbonne University, France)

  • Operationalizing and standardizing trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the field (Sebastian Hallensleben, Association for Electrical, Electronic Information Technologies (VDE), Germany)

  • Person-vehicle collision prevention with embedded Artificial Intelligence (Michel Paindavoine, Yumain, France)

• Session 2: Prerequisites for safe use of AI: confidence, reliability, control

  • Algorithmic management meets EU law: integrating data protection, non-discrimination and collective rights to curb the powers of ‘automated bosses’ (Antonio Aloisi, IE Law School, Spain)
  • Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (André Steimers, Institute for Work and Health (IFA), Germany)
  • Evaluation and certification for safer Artificial Intelligence (Agnes Delaborde, National Metrology and Testing Laboratory (LNE), France)

• Session 3: Possible impacts of AI on humans at work 

  • Artificial Intelligence at work: challenges and opportunities for OSH (Ioannis Anyfantis, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, European Union)
  • Realizing the promise of exoskeletons: research efforts to increase the efficacy and acceptance through Artificial Intelligence-enabled wearable robots (Joseph McIntyre, Tecnalia, Spain)
  • Machinery regulation: a tool contributing to ensure Artificial Intelligence safe machines (Victoria Piedrafita, European Commission, Europe)

• Session 4: Challenges of AI on standardization, testing and certification

  • European standardization in support of the European Artificial Intelligence regulation (Patrick Bezombes, French Standardization Association (Afnor) France)
  • Round table : Christoph Preusse (German Social Accident Insurance Institution for the Wood and Metal (BGHM), Germany), Franck Gambelli (Union of Metallurgies Industries (UIMM), France), Jörg Firnkorn (Dekra, Germany), Isabelle Schoemann (European Trade Union Confederation (Etuc), Europe)