Being Accountable is Smart: Navigating the Technical and Regulatory Landscape of AI-based Services for Power Grid
This work addresses regulatory and safety concerns for AI adoption in critical power grid infrastructure, but it is incremental as it builds on existing frameworks like the AI Act.
The paper tackles the challenge of integrating AI-based services into the smart grid by addressing unclear regulations and risk quantification, proposing a technical approach for accountable AI services to assess life cycle phases and identify risks.
The emergence of artificial intelligence and digitization of the power grid introduced numerous effective application scenarios for AI-based services for the smart grid. Nevertheless, adopting AI in critical infrastructures presents challenges due to unclear regulations and lacking risk quantification techniques. Regulated and accountable approaches for integrating AI-based services into the smart grid could accelerate the adoption of innovative methods in daily practices and address society's general safety concerns. This paper contributes to this objective by defining accountability and highlighting its importance for AI-based services in the energy sector. It underlines the current shortcomings of the AI Act and proposes an approach to address these issues in a potential delegated act. The proposed technical approach for developing and operating accountable AI-based smart grid services allows for assessing different service life cycle phases and identifying related accountability risks.