RE 4 AI 2025

The 6th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Artificial Intelligence (RE4AI 2024) is part of REFSQ 2025 (The 31st International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering).

Nowadays AI is embedded in software and hardware systems, from everyday objects, such as cars, household appliances, wearable devices, to unmanned military vehicles and arms. AI techniques are impacting several industries, and the role of humans in performing creative tasks in domains such as film making, journalism, is challenged by Generative AI. This fosters daily discussions about the opportunities and the risks of AI, at social and individual levels, and calls for responsible development of AI. In particular, we have seen in the past few years, a raise in concerns regarding AI systems, including the emergence of manifestos asking for more regulation and even requesting a pause in giant AI experiments. 

For several years (e.g., 2015 open letter and a document about research priorities), AI researchers have manifested their worries and recommendations for the responsible use of data, employment of discrimination-free algorithms, alignment of AI-based systems and technologies with human values and transparency. Their main aim with such claims is to create awareness in policy makers. As a response, in 2018, Europe has defined three pillars, which state that regarding AI systems, European countries should: be ahead in public and private technological development; support education to prepare for emerging social-economical changes; and assure an appropriate ethical and legal framework. In 2019, Europe further developed its approach in what is known as Trustworthy AI manifesto, which states that AI systems should be lawful, ethical and robust. These principles are at the basis of the work on a European proposal for a legal framework on AI, defining a legal environment and risk levels to be used in the classification on how critical are AI solutions. In June 2023, the EU Parliament discussed the AI act and took some important decisions, including the ban of AI systems classified as posing an unacceptable level of risk to people’s safety, for example remote biometric identification systems in public spaces and predictive policing systems based on profiling.

It is hard to imagine that AI systems will achieve these aforementioned attributes without accounting for a strong emphasis on capturing and maintaining “the right” requirements, and making sure that the system is validated to properly meet such requirements. As the RE community is aware, this entails a myriad of methods and tools covering all RE activities, including requirements analysis, documentation and evolution. Nevertheless, many AI systems are today developed without much focus on the early development stages. In other words, much focus is put on combining different algorithms and heuristics, without however a more abstract view on what the system should deliver. As a result of the lack of RE support, the resulting system may be far from what is intended, leading to failing projects and systems that go rogue, which may ultimately cause harm to human individuals and society.

The main goals of the RE4AI Workshop may be summarized as follows:

• raising awareness in the RE community about the importance of RE in realizing Trustworthy AI systems;

• bringing in the same room people involved in RE4AI research to discuss pressing issues, such as how RE can contribute to prevent AI systems to fail or to go rogue;

• to coordinate and collaborate amongst RE for AI researchers, allowing researchers to keep up on this rapidly growing topic.

To achieve these goals, we plan a workshop with invited talks related to RE for AI.