EU Agrees Regulations For Artificial Intelligence

Uploaded on 2023-12-13 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, GOVERNMENT-National, FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Services-Law

European Union (EU) officials have reached a provisional deal on the world's first comprehensive laws to regulate the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The agreement was reached following lengthy negotiations over new rules for member states about AI in systems like ChatGPT and Facial Recognition technology.

The EU Parliament will vote on the AI Act proposals early in 2024, but any legislation will likely come int to force before 2025.

“This is a historical achievement, and a huge milestone towards the future! Today’s agreement effectively addresses a global challenge in a fast-evolving technological environment on a key area for the future of our societies and economies... we managed to keep an extremely delicate balance: boosting innovation and uptake of artificial intelligence across Europe whilst fully respecting the fundamental rights of our citizens.” said
Carme Artigas, Spanish secretary of state for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence

The agreement places the EU alongside of the US, China and the United Kingdom in the race to regulate AI and protect the public from risks that include potential threat to life that many fear the rapidly developing technology carries.

AI Applications Blocked By The EU

Recognising the potential threat to citizens’ rights and democracy posed by certain applications of AI, the proposed legal framework will prohibit the following:-

Biometric categorisation systems that use sensitive characteristics (e.g. political, religious, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, race).

Untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.

Emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions.

Social scoring based on social behaviour or personal characteristics.

AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will.

AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation).

The EU proposed rules include safeguards on the use of AI within the EU as well as limitations on its adoption by law enforcement agencies. Consumers would have the right to launch complaints and fines could be imposed for violations.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton described the plans as "historic", saying it set "clear rules for the use of AI... it is much more than a rulebook - it's a launch pad for EU start-ups and researchers to lead the global AI race". European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the AI Act would help the development of technology that does not threaten people's safety and rights. On Twitter/X she said it was a "unique legal framework for the development of AI you can trust".

The EU Parliament defines AI as software that can "for a given set of human-defined objectives, generate outputs such as content, predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing the environments they interact with".

ChatGPT and DALL-E are examples of what is called Generative AI. These programs learn from vast quantities of data, such as online text and images, to generate new content which feels like it has been made by a human. So-called "chatbots" like ChatGPT & Google's Bard, can have text conversations, while other AI programs like DALL-E can create images from simple text instructions.

EU Council: EUParliament: BBC: Guardian: NYTimes: FT: CNBC: Image: monsitj

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