EU Sets Global Precedent with Comprehensive AI Regulation Act
The European Union has again set a global precedent by unanimously passing a landmark bit of comprehensive legislation to govern AI: The AI Act.
According to the official press release, ministers in the European Parliament passed the AI Act on Wednesday with 523 votes for, 46 against, and 49 abstentions.
The Act brings a targeted regulatory approach to some of the most pressing issues and anxieties around AI today.
To begin with, the Act lists a blanket ban on certain applications of AI that may threaten citizens’ rights, including systems of biometric categorisation “based on sensitive characteristics” and the “untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.”
The Act also bans social scoring, emotional recognition at work and in school, and any applications that manipulate or exploit human behaviours and vulnerabilities.
Law enforcement is permitted to use real-time biometric systems with prior authorization “in exhaustively listed and narrowly defined situations” as long as their deployment is limited in scope both in time and in geographical place.
AI use in high-risk areas like critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment, essential services (like healthcare and banking), law enforcement, migration and border management, justice and democratic processes are subject to stringent standards of transparency, oversight, reporting and assessment.
General purpose AI is subject to similar requirements. Companies have to comply with European copyright laws and and publish the content they used for training. More powerful general purpose models may need to submit further assessments and reporting
Additionally, all citizens have the right to
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