Time: 15:00–16:30 (GMT+2/Rome time)
Abstract
AI has the potential to rapidly reshaping how evaluations are planned, conducted, synthesised, and communicated particularly in low resource and humanitarian contexts, where pressure to “do more with less” is acute. However, it simultaneously introduces significant ethical, methodological, and governance risks that directly challenge the profession’s credibility, independence, and trustworthiness. AI adds the greatest value when it reduces duplication, lowers transaction costs, and frees human expertise for judgment, ethics, and contextual interpretation, not when it substitutes core evaluative functions or obscures accountability. This creates an urgent need for professional standards to evolve, not by endorsing AI wholesale but defining where it is appropriate, where it is not, and what competencies and safeguards are required.
Looking at their own use case, this roundtable will explore questions around how evaluation standards, competencies, and institutional frameworks adapt to ensure AI strengthen rather than undermine ethical practice, methodological rigor, and public trust. It will be particularly relevant for evaluators and commissioners wrestling with how to translate high-level AI ethics and governance principles into concrete evaluation standards and professional practice.
