LONDON (AP) — European Union officials worked late last week on an agreement on world-leading rules aimed at governing the use of artificial intelligence in the 27-nation bloc.
The Artificial Intelligence Act is the latest set of regulations in Europe designed to govern technology that will have global impact.
Here’s a closer look at the AI rules:
What is the Artificial Intelligence Law and How Does It Work?
The Artificial Intelligence Act takes a “risk-based approach” to products or services that use AI and focuses on regulating uses of AI rather than the technology itself. The legislation is designed to protect democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights such as freedom of expression. We continue to encourage investment and innovation.
The riskier an AI application, the stricter the rules. Those that pose limited risk, such as content recommendation systems or spam filters, will need to follow simple rules, such as disclosing that they are powered solely by AI.
High-risk systems, such as medical devices, face more demanding requirements, such as using high-quality data and providing clear information to users.
Some uses of artificial intelligence, such as social scoring systems that determine how people behave, some predictive policing in schools and workplaces, and emotion recognition systems, have been banned because they are deemed to pose an unacceptable risk.
Except for serious crimes such as kidnapping or terrorism, people’s faces in public places cannot be scanned by police using AI-powered remote “biometric identification” systems.
The Artificial Intelligence Act will not come into force until two years after it receives final approval from European lawmakers, with a confirmation vote due in early 2024. Violations can lead to fines of up to 35 million euros ($38 million), or 7% of a company’s global revenue. revenues.
How does AI action impact the rest of the world?
The Artificial Intelligence Act will apply to the EU’s approximately 450 million residents, but experts say its impact could be felt far beyond due to Brussels’ leading role in drafting the rules that serve as global standards.
The EU has played this role before; Most importantly, it was previous technology directives mandating a common charging plug that forced Apple to abandon its in-house Lightning cable.
While many other countries are trying to figure out whether and how they can rein in AI, the EU’s sweeping regulations are poised to serve as a blueprint.
“The AI Act is the world’s first comprehensive, horizontal and binding AI regulation and will not only be a game-changer in Europe, but will also significantly contribute to the global momentum to regulate AI across jurisdictions,” said Anu Bradford of Columbia Law School. .” Professor specializing in EU law and digital regulation.
“This puts the EU in a unique position to lead the way and show the world that AI can be governed and its development subject to democratic oversight,” he said.
Even what the law does not do could have global consequences, rights groups said.
Amnesty International said that by not fully banning live facial recognition, Brussels had “green-lighted dystopian digital surveillance in 27 EU Member States and set a devastating precedent around the world.”
The partial ban “is a grossly missed opportunity to stop and prevent the massive damage to human rights, civil space and the rule of law that are already under threat through the EU.”
Amnesty International also condemned the failure of lawmakers to ban the export of AI technologies that could harm human rights; Including social scoring, which China uses to reward obedience to the state through surveillance.
WHAT ARE OTHER COUNTRIES DOING ABOUT AI REGULATION?
The United States and China, the world’s two major artificial intelligence powers, have also begun to move forward according to their own rules.
US President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order on artificial intelligence in October; This is expected to be supported by legislation and global agreements.
It requires leading AI developers to share security test results and other information with the government. Agencies will create standards to ensure AI tools are safe before they are released to the public, and will issue guidance for labeling AI-generated content.
Biden’s order builds on previous voluntary commitments from tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft to ensure their products are safe before they are released.
China, meanwhile, has issued “interim measures” to govern generative AI that apply to text, images, audio, video and other content created for people in China.
President Xi Jinping has also proposed a Global AI Governance Initiative, calling for an open and fair environment for AI development.
How Will the Artificial Intelligence Law Affect Chatgpt?
The spectacular rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT showed that the technology was making dramatic advances and forced European policymakers to update their proposals.
The Artificial Intelligence Act includes provisions for chatbots and other so-called general-purpose AI systems that can perform many different tasks, from writing poetry to creating videos and writing computer code.
Authorities took a two-stage approach; Most general-purpose systems faced basic transparency requirements, such as disclosing details about data governance and how much energy they used to train models with extensive written resources, in a nod to the EU’s environmental sustainability efforts. The works and images were scraped from the internet.
They also need to comply with EU copyright law and summarize the content they use for training.
Stricter rules are expected for the most advanced AI systems with the most computing power, which pose “systemic risks” that authorities want to stop spreading to services that other software developers are building on top of.
___
AP writer Frank Bajak contributed from Boston.