Author: Colin Perkins

I attended the Fourth Annual Empirical Research Conference on Standardisation , held in Chicago on 24-25 October 2024 and organised by the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, to present some results from our Streamlining Social Decision Making for Improved Internet Standards project.

Presentation slides

Being organised by a Law School, this was somewhat of a departure from the usual conferences I attend, with quite a different group of people and some new perspectives.

Our work has focussed on the process of developing Internet standards. We’ve considered the factors that affect whether a particular document will be adopted as a standard, what makes a successful author, and how participation in the standards-setting community, and its effectiveness, have changed over time. These topics were certainly considered by the other speakers, but there was also a strong focus on environmental, social, and governance standards, studies of litigation around standards essential patents, and discussion of the interplay between standards and regulation.

The conference also considered standards for large language models (LLMs), and AI more broadly. The presentation of a paper interpreting LLM-based critiques of the European AI Act led to a detailed and nuanced discussion of the possible biases in the training data and what, if anything, this might reveal about the organisations developing the LLMs – a good example of the benefits of inter-disciplinary discussion.

Overall, this was an interesting event – leaving me with much to think about.