The European Commission intends to draw up new legislation to protect its citizens from AI.
Likening AI to the “Wild West” they said they would concentrate on high risk areas. (Are they having a pop at the USA I wonder?)
The EU has already formulated the GDPR the General Data Protection Regulations which came in to effect in 2018. Apparently it proposes a similar piece of legislation to cover Artificial Intelligence.
The EU is very concerned over the possible deployment of facial recognition and it is thought that this may have been the catalyst for their White Paper. Although failing to offer new proposals the paper did offer in a footnote that “freedom of expression, association and assembly must not be undermined by the use of the technology”.
There were other suggestions of how AI could be regulated to ensure it meets ethical standards. Now the Iconoclast here wonders if someone could develop an AI ethical adjudicator, one where all the religious and philosophical writings from the whole world are rendered to make some sort of sensible decisions? Mankind can’t do it.
Does an AI driverless car veer off in to a group of pensioners to avoid a young and brilliant cancer research specialist who absent mindedly steps in to the road?
Anyway here are a few of their suggestions:
• training AI on datasets that are broadly representative of the population, to avoid bias
• requiring organisations to keep detailed records of how AI systems were developed
• requiring that citizens be clearly informed whenever they are interacting with automated systems rather than human beings
• potentially re-training AI systems developed outside the EU so that they comply with rules particular to the bloc.
Perhaps you developers out there in AI research labs will be rethinking your target markets now?
For the purpose of clarity the United Kingdom is in the process of leaving the EU with less than a year of the transitional arrangement remaining.