Between vision and practice: lack of alignment between AI strategies and energy regulations in the Dutch electricity sector

Abstract

Abstract Different governmental institutions are publishing more and more visions, strategies, or proposed regulations related to artificial intelligence. This paper analyses how these visions or proposed regulations are put into practice. To this end, the proposed European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, the Dutch artificial intelligence strategy and the proposed new Dutch energy law are compared. Even though the new Dutch energy law was created parallel and published after the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, it does not take into account the use of artificial intelligence in the electricity actor. Similarly, the focus points of the Dutch artificial intelligence strategy are ignored in the new Dutch energy law. Two issues emerge from this. First, it is questionable if and how visions, strategies and proposed regulations related to AI are translated into different sectors and related practices. Second, as the different acts and proposed regulations do not communicate or overlap, gaps develop between the different policies. It is unclear which institutions will fill in these gaps.

Keywords

• EU AI Act
• Artificial intelligence
• Electricity systems
• Policy
• The Netherlands