The 15th International Conference on Software Business (ICSOB) 2024, was organized between November 18 and 20 in Utrecht, Netherlands. The conference’s theme was ethics, equity, and sustainability in the software business, to which Convergence’s doctoral researcher José contributed in multiple ways.
José was the second author of a paper entitled “The EU AI Act is a good start but falls short” which was a mixed literature review to understand the challenges that the new EU AI Act will have on businesses. In addition to that, José participated in a PhD retreat with an extended abstract entitled “Trustworthy LLMs for Ethically Aligned AI-based Systems: A PhD Research Plan”. In the retreat, José also presented his topic with a poster that was rewarded with the award of best poster.
On top of that, José also showcased a demo entitled “Grounded Ethical AI: A Demonstrative Approach with RAG-Enhanced Agents” in which he was able to present the current state of his research which is an LLM-based multi-agent system with Retrieval Augmented Generation. The system has the EU AI Act embedded with which the agents can develop AI-based systems that are more ethically aligned by grounding their responses based on the articles presented in the EU AI Act.
‘’The best part of the conference was the mentoring that the PhD students received during the PhD retreat because the environment was very welcoming. I could talk about my fears and desires with a kind judgment,’’ José summarized his experience.
Besides that, José was deeply inspired by the speech of motivational speaker Helena Holmström Olsson from the University of Malmö. Overall, the various talks and presentations at the conference reinforced his belief that his research was heading in the right direction, leaving him with a renewed sense of motivation to continue working towards his PhD.