On Feb. 19, the European Commission released a White Paper on Artificial Intelligence outlining its wide-ranging plan to develop artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe. The commission also released a companion European data strategy, aiming to make more data sets available for business and government to promote AI development, along with a report on the safety of AI systems proposing some reforms of the commission’s product liability regime.
Initial press reports about the white paper focused on how the commission had stepped back from a proposal in its initial draft for a three- to five-year moratorium on facial recognition technology. But the proposed framework is much more than that: It represents a sensible and thoughtful basis to guide the EU’s consideration of legislation to help direct the development of AI applications, and an important contribution to similar debates going on around the world.
The key takeaways are that the EU plans to:
Pursue a uniform approach to AI across the EU in order to avoid divergent member state requirements forming barriers to its single market.
Take a risk-based, sector-specific approach to regulating AI.
Identify in advance high-risk sectors and applications—including facial recognition software.
Impose new regulatory requirements and prior assessments to ensure that high-risk AI systems conform to requirements for safety, fairness and data protection before they are released onto the market.
Use access to the huge European market as a lever to spread the EU’s approach to AI regulation across the globe.
