AI is rapidly transforming decision-making across key sectors like healthcare, transport, media, and public services. From diagnosing diseases to managing port traffic or detecting disinformation, AI enhances efficiency and predictive capabilities. Yet, as these systems become more complex and autonomous, the question arises: can we trust them?
To gain public trust, AI must be not just powerful, but also trustworthy—aligned with ethical principles, legal standards, and societal values. It must be fair, transparent, accountable, and understandable. Organisations need tools to assess and improve these traits in AI systems.
Today, few tools exist to evaluate AI trustworthiness or help non-experts understand AI decisions. There is also limited support for integrating ethical, legal, and technical elements into AI design in a structured way. This is the gap that THEMIS 5.0 aims to fill.
THEMIS 5.0 envisions AI that is trustworthy by design—built to reflect human values and continuously improved through interaction with users. At its core is a Trustworthiness Optimization Platform that supports hybrid human-AI decision-making by incorporating user feedback and AI-driven optimization methods. It aligns with the EU’s ethical standards for trustworthy AI.
To support explainable, ethical decision-making, THEMIS 5.0 applies virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and utilitarianism—allowing systems to reflect users’ moral preferences. The project supports the EU’s push for human-centric AI, as seen in the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, the EU AI Act, and the Digital Strategy.
THEMIS integrates social sciences and humanities (SSH) into its technical design. Through participatory workshops across Europe, it gathers input from professionals and citizens to ensure the platform reflects real-world values and expectations.
The expected impacts of THEMIS 5.0 are both broad and far-reaching:
At the user level, individuals—whether professionals or citizens—gain tools to understand and shape how AI affects their lives, increasing transparency, trust, and fairness.
At the organisational level, public and private actors can assess, improve, and demonstrate the trustworthiness of their AI systems, helping meet legal and regulatory requirements.
At the societal level, THEMIS supports ethical AI adoption, reinforcing Europe’s leadership in responsible digital transformation.
THEMIS 5.0 also focuses on delivering real impact in three high-stakes sectors:
Healthcare: The platform will increase the transparency and reliability of AI-driven diagnostic tools, supporting better decisions and improving patient outcomes.
Media: By evaluating the fairness and performance of AI systems used to moderate content and detect disinformation, THEMIS 5.0 helps safeguard democratic discourse.
Port Management: The project will optimise AI-based decision-support tools used for operational logistics, helping reduce delays and improve efficiency—particularly in the accurate prediction of vessel arrival times.
