NordAId: Trustworthy AI in Public Decision Making
A collaboration between the universities of Oslo, Copenhagen, Uppsala and Vilnius, NordAId seeks to identify the limits and benefits for AI-based decision-making.
The goal of NordAId is to develop an interdisciplinary meta-framework for trustworthy AI in public decision-making in the Nordic-Baltic context. This will be achieved by testing with partners and civil society AI tools in the hard case of asylum, which covers multiple high risk categories in the EU’s AI Act. The project builds on a Nordic-Baltic dataset of almost 1 million asylum decisions, and the team brings world-leading expertise on adaptive AI governance, Explainable AI, uncertainty quantification, and participatory design.
Nordic and Baltic states present a puzzle in the responsible use of AI in public decision-making. The region is uniquely well-positioned with high quality datasets, strong AI communities, and relatively high public trust in human and even AI-based decision-making. However, a range of challenges have arisen. Data is difficult to access, insufficient attention has been paid to trustworthiness and Nordic regulatory requirements, and, as a result, existing efforts tend to be under-specified and focus on ‘low hanging fruits’ that are difficult to scale.
The NordAId project will seek to address this by focusing on asylum decision-making. Empirical evidence of bias and noise in human decision making means that there is a strong interest in AI in this domain. Vice versa, asylum decision-making concerns highly vulnerable individuals, and AI deployment in asylum falls within half the high-risk categories in the EU AI Act. As a hard case, asylum decision-making thus enables us to address wider concerns about AI in public administration and courts.
The project team is uniquely positioned to develop such an approach for trustworthy AI. In a previous NordForsk project, we built a unique data infrastructure of asylum decisions (s2-Data). It permits application of data science techniques on large volumes of decisions, while restricting and minimising access to personal data. This infrastructure allows NordAId to develop, test, and evaluate a spectrum of generalisable AI models with user partners. This way, the project can develop a ‘meta-framework’ for assessing and extending the trustworthiness of AI-based decision-making, focusing on improving decision-making through value-creating solutions that go beyond merely improving efficiency.
1) Under what circumstances can AI-based public decision-making be trustworthy?
2) How can the trustworthiness of such decision-making be enhanced?
3) To what extent do these innovations ensure calibrated trustworthiness?
Uppsala University, Sweden
Rebecca Stern
Rebecca.Stern@jur.uu.se
Vilnius University, Lithuania
Inga Martinkutė
inga.martinkute@tf.vu.lt
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen
tgh@jur.ku.dk
University of Oslo, Norway
Malcolm Langford
malcolm.langford@jus.uio.no
Funded by:
NordAId has received a three year funding from NordForsk.
Project: NordAId: Trustworthy AI in Public Decision Making
Period: 2026-2029.
Contact
Project Leader:
Martin Langford
malcolm.langford@jus.uio.no
KU contact:
Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen
tgh@jur.ku.dk
Researchers
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External members:
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| Rebecca Stern | Professor, Uppsala University |
| Inga Martinkutė | Senior Lecturer, Vilnius University |
| Arnoldo Frigessi | Professor, University of Oslo |
| David Sumpter | Professor, Uppsala University |
| Monika Žalnieriutė | Professor, University of Oslo |
| Katja Franko | Professor, University of Oslo |
| Lee Bygrave | Professor, University of Oslo |
| Thomas Moeslund | Professor, Aalborg University |
| Samson Esayas | Associate Professor, University of Oslo |
| Daniel Chen | Professor, Harvard University, University Toulouse |
| Runar H. Lie | Associate Professor, University of Oslo |
| Katja de Vries | Associate Professor, Uppsala University |
| Sandra Friberg | Associate Professor, Uppsala University |
| Jurgita Paužaitė-Kulvinskienė | Professor, Vilnius University |
| Goda Strikaitė Latušinskaja | Lecturer, Vilnius University |
| Neringa Gaubienė | Assistant Professor, Vilnius University |