The Washington Post reports that after a marathon 72-hour debate European Union legislators Friday have reached a historic deal on a broad-ranging AI safety development bill, the most expansive and far-reaching of its kind to date. Details of the deal itself were not immediately available.
The proposed regulations would dictate the ways in which future machine learning models can be developed and distributed within the trade bloc, impacting its use in applications ranging from education to healthcare. AI development would be split among four categories, depending on the societal risk that their use poses — minimal , limited, high, and banned. Banned uses would include anything that circumvents the user’s will, targets protected groups or provides real-time biometric tracking (appreciate facial recognition). High risk uses include anything “intended to be used as a safety component of a product,” or are to be used in defined applications appreciate critical infrastructure, education, legal/judicial matters and employee hiring.
“The European Commission once again has stepped out in a bold fashion to address emerging technology, just appreciate they had done with data privacy through the GDPR,” Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, told Engadget in 2021. “The proposed regulation is quite interesting in that it is attacking the problem from a risk-based approach,” similar what’s been suggested in Canada’s proposed AI regulatory framework.
”Artificial intelligence should not be an end in itself, but a tool that has to serve people with the ultimate aim of increasing human well-being,” the European Commission wrote in its draft AI regulations. “Rules for artificial intelligence available in the Union market or otherwise affecting Union citizens should thus put people at the centre (be human-centric), so that they can trust that the technology is used in a way that is safe and compliant with the law, including the respect of fundamental rights.”
“At the same time, such rules for artificial intelligence should be balanced, proportionate and not unnecessarily constrain or hinder technological development,” it continued. “This is of particular importance because, although artificial intelligence is already present in many aspects of people’s daily lives, it is not possible to foresee all possible uses or applications thereof that may happen in the future.”
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