{"slug": "annual-alumni-event-2026-panel-discussion", "title": "Annual Alumni Event 2026: Panel Discussion", "summary": "KU Leuven's AI Summer School will host an online panel discussion on September 24, 2026, exploring AI's impact on human cognitive skills. The event features alumni speakers and moderators, addressing human-machine interaction, trust, and policy responses.", "body_md": "# Annual Alumni Event 2026: Panel Discussion\n\n**Annual Alumni Event 2026: Panel Discussion**\n\n*Online, 24 September, 14:00 - 15:00 CEST*\n\nAs part of our yearly alumni event, we organise a discussion panel featuring Summer School Alumni. This page gives you a sneak peek at this year's panel. **Practical information, as well as the registration link will be distributed via email**. More information about our Annual Alumni Event can be found [here](https://www.law.kuleuven.be/ai-summer-school/events-1/annual-alumni-event-2026-1).\n\n**\"****Empowering or Creating Dependency? The Spectrum of AI’s Impacts on Humans’ Cognitive Skills\"**\n\nAs AI systems are increasingly integrated into decision-making processes across sectors, there are ongoing debates about what the use of AI means for humans’ cognitive and critical thinking skills. This panel speaks to these debates by exploring the spectrum of impacts that the use of AI systems as part of a variety of tasks has on humans’ cognitive abilities. It touches upon issues of human-machine interaction, trust, human rights, and accountability, among others, identifies the broader, societal, legal, and ethical implications of current trends observable in various domains, and discusses potential policy responses.\n\n**Speakers:**\n\n- Ylja Remmits (alumna 2025)\n- Risto Uuk (alumnus 2022)\n- María José Villalobos Quesada (alumna 2023)\n\n**Moderators:**\n\n- Anna Nadibaidze (alumna 2023)\n- Anja Reimann (alumna 2024)\n\n## Ylja Remmits - speaker\n\nYlja is a computer scientist by training, who always aims to build bridges between engineers, lawyers and policy makers. She has experience advising multinationals and governments on the responsible use of algorithms and AI and auditing their systems. Now she works at the Dutch ministry of Justice where she works on internal policies and processes to ensure all AI is responsibly sourced, build and deployed, performs well and is compliant and non-discriminatory.\n\n## Risto Uuk - speaker\n\nRisto Uuk is the Head of European Policy and Research at the Future of Life Institute, where he contributed to shaping the general-purpose AI and systemic risk provisions of the EU AI Act. He is a PhD researcher at KU Leuven, a member of Estonia's government AI advisory board under the Prime Minister, and co-author of The AI Endgame (Wiley, forthcoming). He also leads the EU AI Act Newsletter, which has over 50,000 subscribers.\n\n## María José Villalobos Quesada - speaker\n\nMaría Villalobos is currently an Assistant Professor at the National eHealth Living Lab (NeLL) at Leiden University Medical Center (the Netherlands) and a member of the teaching team of the Master in Bioethics and Law at the University of Barcelona. Her work focuses on informing the development and implementation of digital health from an ethical and legal perspective, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manchester, a MSc in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and a MA in Bioethics and Law from the University of Barcelona.\n\n## Anna Nadibaidze - moderator\n\nAnna Nadibaidze is a Postdoctoral Researcher in International Politics at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark. Her research examines artificial intelligence in international security and the governance of AI in the military domain.\n\n## Anja Reimann - moderator\n\nAnja Reimann is the Head of Unit - International Research and Innovation at the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. She is responsible for the implementation and governance of the European Science and Innovation fund 'Horizon Europe’ leading a team of experts to advise Dutch R&I players. In 2025 she was the national candidate for the Woman in AI Fellowship of the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research.\n\n## How to join the event?\n\nAll alumni will receive an email with the full schedule of the event and a registration link. The link will also allow alumni to register their interest to present their work during the alumni research presentation session.\n\nFor any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us directly.\n\nWe hope to see many of you there!\n\nNo results were found.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/annual-alumni-event-2026-panel-discussion", "canonical_source": "https://www.law.kuleuven.be/ai-summer-school/events-1/annual-alumni-event-2026", "published_at": "2026-06-23 07:40:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-24 00:52:50.715342+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy", "ai-safety", "ai-research"], "entities": ["KU Leuven", "Future of Life Institute", "Leiden University Medical Center", "University of Southern Denmark", "Ylja Remmits", "Risto Uuk", "María José Villalobos Quesada", "Anna Nadibaidze"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/annual-alumni-event-2026-panel-discussion", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/annual-alumni-event-2026-panel-discussion.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/annual-alumni-event-2026-panel-discussion.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/annual-alumni-event-2026-panel-discussion.jsonld"}}