We explore responsible AI governance with Hadassah Drukarch, former Director of Policy and Delivery at the Responsible AI Institute and current PhD researcher at Leiden University.
Hadassah shares her journey into AI ethics and governance, driven by her interest in problem-solving and recognizing that traditional top-down legal approaches are insufficient for emerging technologies – we need bottom-up perspectives as well.
The conversation centers on a critical disconnect: regulatory frameworks for AI are often too generalised and detached from practical implementation contexts. While frameworks like the EU AI Act provide baseline standards, Hadassah expresses serious doubts about their effectiveness, noting that implementing responsible AI looks dramatically different across industries like healthcare and finance.
Perhaps most compelling is Hadassah's work testing healthcare robotics, which revealed significant gaps between regulatory standards and real-world performance. Her team's experiments showed that exoskeleton technology designed primarily for elderly users had been tested predominantly on male subjects and was often uncomfortable or unusable for women – demonstrating how policy development frequently lacks critical real-world testing with diverse user populations.
Hadassah advocates for creating infrastructure that incorporates practical, on-the-ground testing directly into the regulatory process, replacing theoretical frameworks with evidence-based governance.
The conversation concludes with reflections on the value of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and practical conversations – like this podcast – as essential resources in this rapidly evolving field.
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