The lawmakers in the European Union (EU) voted in favour of new, tougher rules to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. They passed a draft law, known as the AI Act, which is aimed at placing greater restrictions on how the technology can be used based on acceptable levels of risk.
The landmark draft law includes what is completely banned, and it makes it mandatory for companies like ChatGPT maker OpenAI to disclose the data used to train their AI models. The European Parliament has adopted the draft with an overwhelming majority: with 499 votes in favour, 28 against and 93 abstentions.
It is to be noted that the final version of the AI Act, seeking to set a global standard for the technology used in automated factories for AI chatbots and self-driving cars, may not be passed until later this year.
“The rules would ensure that AI developed and used in Europe is fully in line with EU rights and values including human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination and social and environmental wellbeing,” it added.
AI Act: Prohibited practices :
The rules follow a risk-based approach and establish obligations for those deploying AI systems. These obligations will depend on the level of risk the AI can generate.
This means that those AI systems that demonstrate an unacceptable level of risk to people’s safety would be prohibited, such as those used for social scoring (classifying people based on their social behaviour or personal characteristics).
“Real-time” and “post” remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces and biometric categorisation systems using sensitive characteristics (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, political orientation) will be prohibited under the upcoming Act.
Predictive policing systems (based on profiling, location or past criminal behaviour) and emotion recognition systems in law enforcement, border management, the workplace, and educational institutions will also be banned.
Finally, untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases, which essentially violates human rights and the right to privacy, will also not be allowed.
AI systems that pose significant harm to people’s health, safety, fundamental rights or the environment will be classified as high-risk applications. European lawmakers also added AI systems used to influence voters and the outcome of elections and recommender systems used by social media platforms to the high-risk list.
What AI companies must do :
Companies like Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others will have to assess and mitigate possible risks (to health, safety, fundamental rights, the environment, democracy and the rule of law) and register their models in the EU database before their release on the EU market.
Generative AI systems based on such models, like ChatGPT, would have to comply with transparency requirements, which include disclosing that the content was AI-generated and also help distinguish ‘deep fake’ images from real ones.
Companies must also ensure safeguards against generating illegal content and summaries of the copyrighted data used for their training would also have to be made publicly available.
What is allowed :
The lawmakers said that in order to boost AI innovation and support small and medium enterprises (SMEs), there are some exemptions.
The new law will promote regulatory sandboxes, or real-life environments, established by public authorities to test AI before it is deployed.
The regulations also give powers to citizens to file complaints about AI systems and receive explanations of decisions based on high-risk AI systems.
- Times of India
