Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
This paper investigates the "Last Mile" Challenge of implementing EU AI Act requirements within an AI startup using insider action research. They introduce a legal-text-to-action pipeline that translates legal requirements into actionable strategies through internal expert collaboration. The study identifies three patterns in practitioners' perceptions of regulatory requirements (convergence, existing practice, and disconnection), revealing that practitioners prioritize requirements that serve end-users or their own development needs.
AI governance risks becoming performative box-ticking unless practitioners understand how compliance directly improves system quality and user protection.
Under the EU AI Act, translating AI governance requirements into software development practice remains challenging. While AI governance frameworks exist at industry and organizational levels, empirical evidence of team-level implementation is scarce. We address this"Last Mile"Challenge through insider action research embedded within an AI startup. We present a legal-text-to-action pipeline that translates EU AI Act requirements into actionable strategies through internal expert collaboration by extracting requirements from legal text, engaging practitioners in assessment and ideation, and prioritizing implementation through collective evaluation. Our analysis reveals three patterns in how practitioners perceive regulatory requirements: convergence (compliance aligns with development priorities), existing practice (current work already satisfies requirements), and disconnection (requirements perceived as administrative overhead). Based on these patterns, we discuss when governance might be treated genuinely or performatively. Practitioners prioritize requirements that serve end-users or their own development needs, but view verification-oriented requirements as box-ticking exercises. This distinction suggests a translation challenge: regulatory requirements risk superficial treatment unless practitioners understand how compliance serves system quality and user protection. Expert collaboration offers a practical mechanism for transforming governance from external imposition to shared ownership and making previously invisible governance work visible and collective.
