The AI Engineer's Guide to Surviving the EU AI Act

Appendix D. Emerging Roles in Organizations for EU AI Act Compliance

Compliance with the EU AI Act is operationalized on two levels: the organizational level and the individual AI system level. As organizations increasingly adopt AI technologies, new roles are emerging to support compliance efforts and manage associated risks. This appendix explores those roles and common team topologies.

Emerging Roles

The AI ethics specialist plays a crucial role in ensuring that AI systems are designed and implemented in alignment with ethical principles. Their responsibilities include developing AI ethics values, guidelines, and frameworks (see the Values Canvas), as well as conducting ethical impact assessments for AI projects. They address concerns related to bias, fairness, and transparency in AI systems and work closely with legal, compliance, and AI development teams. Staying up-to-date with AI ethics research and best practices is also a key part of their role.

The AI internal auditor is responsible for independently assessing AI systems to ensure compliance with ethical and regulatory standards. This involves conducting audits to evaluate the fairness, transparency, and accountability of AI systems and benchmarking them against organizational policies and external regulations. The auditor provides recommendations for improving the compliance of AI systems and develops AI-specific audit frameworks and methodologies. Collaboration with AI ethics specialists and compliance officers is ...