CoR Plenary (December 2021)

The Commission is proposing a new Artificial Intelligence Act laying down rules harmonised rules on AI. This initial appraisal of the Commission’s impact assessment on the proposal notes how the impact assessment the impact assessment banks on a wealth of available research on the topic at hand and uses numerous sources to underpin the discussion. It observes that the impact assessment offers a diverse and realistic range of options and traces a clear intervention logic connecting the problems and their drivers with the specific objectives and the policy options.

The EU can become a global standard-setter in the area of artificial intelligence ethics. Common EU legislative action on ethical aspects of AI could boost the internal market and establish an important strategic advantage. Building on the EU's economic and regulatory powers, common EU legislative action has great potential to provide European industry with a competitive edge. Furthermore, EU action can facilitate the adoption of EU standards globally and ensure that the development, uptake and diffusion of AI is based on the values, principles and rights protected in the EU. The analyses of this European added value assessment suggest that a common EU framework on ethics has the potential to bring the European Union €294.9 billion in additional GDP and 4.6 million additional jobs by 2030.

This study deals with the ethical implications and moral questions that arise from the development and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It also reviews the guidelines and frameworks that countries and regions around the world have created to address these. It presents a comparison between the current main frameworks and the main ethical issues, and highlights gaps around mechanisms of fair benefit sharing; assigning of responsibility; exploitation of workers; energy demands in the context of environmental and climate changes; and more complex and less certain implications of AI, such as those regarding human relationships.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is probably the defining technology of the last decade, and perhaps also the next. The aim of this report is to support meaningful reflection and productive debate about AI by providing accessible information about the full range of current and speculative techniques and their associated impacts, and setting out a wide range of regulatory, technological and societal measures that could be mobilised in response.

This EPRS publication explains the state of play and further highlights the concerns raised by the use and the potential impacts on people's fundamental rights of facial recognition technologies. Against this background, the paper explores the current EU legal framework applicable to facial recognition and examines the recent proposals for regulating facial recognition technologies at EU level in depth.

The EU is actively exploring how AI technologies can be developed and adopted in order to improve border control and security. A number of applications for biometric identification, emotion detection, risk assessment and migration monitoring have already been deployed or tested at EU borders. AI technologies may bring important benefits for border control and security, such as increased efficiency, better fraud-detection and risk analysis.

This article analyses the potential benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI). It argues that the EU should become a leading force in AI development. As a goal that captures the public imagination and mobilises a variety of actors, the EU should develop mission-based innovations that focus on using this technological leadership to solve the most pressing societal problems of our time whilst avoiding potential dangers and risks. This leadership could be achieved either by adapting the EU’s available instruments to focus on AI development or by designing new ones. Be it seeking a visionary future for AI or addressing concerns about it, progress should always be driven with the human-centred perspective in mind, that is, one that seeks to augment human intelligence and capacity, and not to supersede it.

This briefing addresses the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), namely, how to ensure that AI benefits citizens and communities, according to European values and principles. Focusing on data and consumer protection, it presents risks and prospects of the applications of AI, it identifies the main legal regimes that are applicable, and examines a set of key legal issues.