The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act: A Benchmark for Other Regions and a Warning from Privacy Rights Concerning High-Impact Systems

Following a round of intense negotiations this week, lawmakers in Brussels have now reached a “provisional agreement” on the European Union’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). The EU’s Artificial intelligence Act could become a benchmark for other regions that are looking to pass similar laws.

According to the press release, the negotiations established obligations for high-impact general-purpose artificial intelligence systems that meet certain benchmarks. The systems that require transparency include creating technical documents and detailed summaries of the content used for training, something that companies like OpenAI have not yet done.

Another element is that citizens should have a right to launch complaints about AI systems and receive explanations about decisions on “high-risk” systems that impact their rights.

The press release doesn’t go into detail about how everything would work or what the benchmarks are, but it does mention that companies could be fined if they break the rules. They vary based on the violation and size of the company and can range from 35 million euros or 7 percent of global revenue, to 7.5 million euros or 1.5 percent of global revenue of turnover.

An EU Parliament resolution to ban artificial intelligence (AI) for research purposes and implications for artificial intelligence systems based on human behavior, bias, and sexual orientation

There are a number of applications where the use of AI is banned, like scraping facial images from CCTV footage, categorization based on “sensitive characteristics” like race, sexual orientation, religion, or political beliefs, emotion recognition at work or school, or the creation of “social scoring” systems. The last two banned bullet points are AI systems that “manipulate human behavior to circumvent their free will” or “exploit the vulnerabilities of people.” There are exceptions to the rules for the law enforcement usage of automated systems for real-time or searching for evidence in recordings.

He said by text message that it was very good, after being asked if it included everything he wanted. We had to accept some compromises but it was good. The law won’t take effect until 2025, but it threatens stiff financial penalties for companies who violate it, which could be up to 38 million euros.

Now that a provisional agreement has been reached, more negotiations will still be required, including votes by Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees.

Negotiations over rules regulating live biometrics monitoring (such as facial recognition) and “general-purpose” foundation AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have been highly divisive. The press conference announcing the agreement to be delayed is said to have been caused by this being debated this week.

After months of debate, EU lawmakers from the Council, Commission, and Parliament thrashed out a new law for regulating companies like OpenAI. Lawmakers were under pressure to strike a deal before the EU parliament election campaign starts.

Companies that don’t comply with the rules can be fined up to 7 percent of their global turnover. The bans on prohibited AI will take effect in six months, the transparency requirements in 12 months, and the full set of rules in around two years.

The measures were designed to make it easier to protect copyrighted works, and also to require general purpose artificial intelligence systems to be more transparent about their energy use.

The European Commission reaches a deal on the world’s first comprehensive AI rules: How well can the EU regulate ad hoc AI startups?

The Commissioner for European Commission said Europe has positioned itself as a pioneer and understands the importance of its role as a global standard Setter in a press conference on Friday.

Daniel Friedlaender, the European office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said that the political deal marked the start of important technical work on crucial details of the Artificial Intelligence Act.

The act will have to be voted on by the European Parliament early next year, but with the deal that has been brokered that’s not a problem, according to Brando Benifei, an Italian lawmaker co-leading the body’s negotiating efforts.

Artificial intelligence has exploded into the world of consciousness, with users able to create text, photos and songs but raising fears about the risks that come with it and even human life.

Strong and comprehensive rules from the EU “can set a powerful example for many governments considering regulation,” said Anu Bradford, a Columbia Law School professor who’s an expert on EU law and digital regulation. Other countries may not copy all of the provisions but will likely follow a lot of them.

AI companies subject to the EU’s rules will also likely extend some of those obligations outside the continent, she said. It is not efficient to re-train separate models for different markets.

Foundation models looked set to be one of the biggest sticking points for Europe. Despite opposition from France, negotiators reached a compromise early in the talks that would allow self-regulation to aid European generativeai companies competing with U.S rivals.

Source: Europe reaches a deal on the world’s first comprehensive AI rules

Scaling up the Internet to fight cybercriminals: The European Parliament voted to ban face scanning and other distance-based anthropological systems

Also known as large language models, these systems are trained on vast troves of written works and images scraped off the internet. They give generative AI systems the ability to create something new, unlike traditional AI, which processes data and completes tasks using predetermined rules.

Foundation models built by a few big tech companies could be used to create powerful online fake news, according to researchers.

Rights groups say that the lack of transparency about data used to train models poses risks to daily life because it acts as basic structures for software developers building services using artificial intelligence.

European lawmakers wanted a complete ban of face scanning and other “remote identification” systems because of privacy concerns. But governments of member countries succeeded in negotiating exemptions so law enforcement could use them to tackle serious crimes like child sexual exploitation or terrorist attacks.

“Whatever the victories may have been in these final negotiations, the fact remains that huge flaws will remain in this final text,” said Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Access Now.