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EU agrees on AI rules
Courtesy of ICRT & Europa
European Union negotiators have clinched a deal on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules.
The announcement paves the way for legal oversight of emerging technology used in popular services like ChatGPT that's promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of dangers to humanity.
Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points including generative AI and police use of face recognition surveillance.
That allowed them to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act. The law still needs final approval and wouldn't take effect until 2025 at the earliest.
According to a press release on Europa, the EU’s official website, the new rules will be applied directly in the same way across all Member States, based on a future-proof definition of AI. They follow a risk-based approach. Minimal risk applications such as AI-enabled recommender systems or spam filters will benefit from a free-pass and absence of obligations. AI systems identified as high-risk will be required to comply with strict requirements, including risk-mitigation systems, high quality of data sets, logging of activity, detailed documentation, clear user information, human oversight, and a high level of robustness, accuracy and cybersecurity. AI systems considered a clear threat to the fundamental rights of people will be banned. Companies not complying with the rules will be fined.
The AI Act introduces dedicated rules for general purpose AI models that will ensure transparency along the value chain. For very powerful models that could pose systemic risks, there will be additional binding obligations related to managing risks and monitoring serious incidents, performing model evaluation and adversarial testing. These new obligations will be operationalised through codes of practices developed by industry, the scientific community, civil society and other stakeholders together with the Commission.
In terms of governance, national competent market surveillance authorities will supervise the implementation of the new rules at national level, while the creation of a new European AI Office within the European Commission will ensure coordination at European level. The new AI Office will also supervise the implementation and enforcement of the new rules on general purpose AI models. Along with the national market surveillance authorities, the AI Office will be the first body globally that enforces binding rules on AI and is therefore expected to become an international reference point. For general purpose models, a scientific panel of independent experts will play a central role by issuing alerts on systemic risks and contributing to classifying and testing the models.
The political agreement is now subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and the Council and will enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal. The AI Act would then become applicable two years after its entry into force, except for some specific provisions: Prohibitions will already apply after 6 months while the rules on General Purpose AI will apply after 12 months.
