The European Union has recently reached a political deal, to roll out a comprehensive regulation on Artificial Intelligence, marking the world’s first comprehensive AI law.
The regulation proposed by the lawmakers is to ensure that AI systems used in the EU are transparent, environmentally friendly, safe, traceable, and non-discriminatory, to prevent harmful outcomes.
Speaking on the unveiling of the historic EU law on AI, the current commissioner for the internal market of the European Union Thierry Breton wrote on X,
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“Historic! The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI. The AI act is much more than a rule book, it’s a launchpad for EU startups and researchers to lead the global AI race. The best is yet to come”.
Also speaking on the recent AI Law, MEP Brando Benefei, who co-led the parliament’s negotiating team with Dragos Tudorache, said the commission had one objective to deliver legislation that would ensure that the ecosystem of Al in Europe will develop with a human-centric, approach respecting fundamental rights, human values, building trust, and building consciousness of how the union can get the best out of the current Al revolution.
He added that the EU was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, where giant tech companies like Facebook, were allowed to grow into multi-billion dollar corporations with no obligation to regulate content on their platforms.
The new rule establishes obligations for providers and users depending on the level of risk from Artificial intelligence. According to the New York Times, European policymakers focused on A.I riskiest uses by companies and governments, including those for law enforcement and the operation of crucial services like water and energy.
The deal reached with lawmakers includes a total prohibition of the Use of AI for:
•Biometric categorization 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 behavior or personal characteristics;
•Al systems that manipulate human behavior to circumvent their free will;
•Al used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation).
Also, generative Al, like ChatGPT, would have to comply with transparency requirements such as; Disclosing that the content was generated by Al, Designing the model to prevent it from generating illegal content, and Publishing summaries of copyrighted data used for training.
For Al systems classified as high-risk, due to their significant potential harm to health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy, and the rule of law, and clear obligations were agreed upon.
MEPs successfully managed to include a mandatory fundamental rights impact assessment, among other requirements, applicable also to the insurance and banking sectors. All systems used to influence the outcome of elections and voter behavior are also classified as high-risk.
Notably, citizens will have a right to launch complaints about Al systems and receive explanations about decisions based on high-risk Al systems that impact their rights.
Non-compliance with the AI rule can lead to fines ranging from 35 million Euro or 7% of global turnover to 7.5 million or 1.5% of turnover, depending on the level of infringement and size of the firm.
With the latest comprehensive regulation on AI, the EU is the first in the world to launch such a law on the technology, to guide its development and evolution in a human-centric direction.