The European Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees approved this Thursday the start of negotiations with the Council on the first regulation of artificial intelligence in the European Union (EU), which will start after approval in June.
Approved by the parliamentary committees on internal market and consumer protection and civil liberties, justice and home affairs – by 84 votes to seven, with 12 abstentions – the negotiating project will be voted on in plenary in mid-June. negotiations between the European Assembly and the Council (where the 27 EU Member States are represented) can then officially start on the final form of this legislation, which was proposed two years ago.
MEPs want to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) systems are overseen by humans, safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly”, and also want “a unified definition of AI, designed to from the point of being neutral”. from a technological point of view, so that it can be applied to today’s and tomorrow’s systems,” the parliamentary committees said in a statement.
MEPs argue that “generative models, such as ChatGPT, should meet additional transparency requirements, such as disclosing that the content is AI-generated, designing the model to prevent it from generating illegal content, and publishing summaries of data that are protected by authors’ rights used for training”.
Once approved, these will be the world’s first rules on AI, making the EU the first bloc to legislate on the issue, banning biometric surveillance, recognition and emotion tracking by AI systems, for example.
In April 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal to regulate artificial intelligence systems, the first legislation at EU level aimed at mitigating the risks of technology.
After several strategies for the AI field and a market consultation, the then community executive proposed a regulation to protect EU values and fundamental rights and user safety, aiming to mandate systems deemed to be of high risk to comply with mandatory requirements regarding its reliability.
This will therefore be the first legislation aimed at AI, despite the fact that the creators and those responsible for the development of this technology are already subject to European legislation on fundamental rights, consumer protection and rules on product safety and responsibility.
Additional requirements are expected to address the risks, such as the existence of human oversight or the obligation to provide clear information about the capabilities and limitations of artificial intelligence.
AI is increasingly used in areas such as entertainment (customization of content), ‘online’ commerce (prediction of consumer tastes), home appliances (intelligent programming) and electronic equipment (use of virtual assistants such as Siri or Alexa, among others) .
The European Commission has tried to strengthen cooperation between Member States on AI, but there is still no common legal framework. cosmetics or toys.
The goal is to move from a voluntary approach to the regulatory sphere.
Source: DN
