This training will take place on 29-30 September 2026 in person in Brussels, Belgium. It is aimed at Members of the Equinet Artificial Intelligence Working Group and the Cluster on Racial and Religious Equality.
Background
The use of artificial intelligence in all areas of life, and particularly in the fields of law enforcement, border control, national security, and social protection, carries particular risks of creating and reproducing large-scale discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, and religion and belief. Artificial intelligence trained on discriminatory data has provenly reinforced racist and xenophobic structural discrimination, including through enabling racial and ethnic profiling by risk assessment systems, predictive analytics, facial recognition, and algorithmic decision making. On the other hand, the AI Act contains multiple exemptions for law enforcement, migration control, and national security authorities risking to create protection gaps precisely in the areas where there is ample evidence for a history of consistently perpetrated systematic and structural discrimination Equality Bodies have a critical role to play in filling these regulatory gaps by using their equality and non-discrimination mandates to uncover and redress AI-driven direct and indirect discrimination (including via the use of proxies) on the grounds of race, ethnicity, and religion and belief.
This training, held jointly with the AI Working Group and the newly formed Cluster on Racial and Religious Equality, will explore AI-driven profiling and discrimination on these grounds, to equip Equality Bodies with a better understanding of these trends and how they can use their powers to prevent, investigate, and redress such forms of discrimination.
Objectives
- Enhance Equality Bodies’ understanding of AI-driven discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, and religion and belief.
- Explore how Equality Bodies can use their powers and mandates to prevent, investigate and redress such forms of discrimination and profiling in an AI-context
- Build Equality Bodies’ capacity to monitor the application of potentially discriminatory AI systems, in particular on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion and belief, including through collaboration with civil society organisations
- Share and exchange existing good practices, strategies, and collaborative working amongst Equality Bodies to tackle these challenges
Participants
The target audience of this training is members of the Equinet Artificial Intelligence Working Group and the Cluster on Racial and Religious Equality.
For further information, please contact Milla Vidina ([email protected]) and Daris Lewis Recio ([email protected]).