European Commission wants agreement on AI law this year – 05/29/2023 – Tech

This year, the European Commission expects an agreement in the European Union (EU) on the first law on artificial intelligence (AI), although it admits that the new rules will only come into force in 2025, not keeping up with the speed of technology.

“We hope to have the first trialogue [discussão entre co-legisladores] on the AI ​​Law in Europe before the summer, which would mean that, if we work hard for it, we could have a result by the end of the year”, says the executive vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the initiative “A Europe Prepared for the Digital Age and for Competition”, Margrethe Vestager.

In an interview with the Lusa agency and other European media in Brussels, the official explains that, even in the face of an agreement this year at the European level, “this would still take at least one, if not two years, to enter into force”.

“Which means we need something to fix that time period because the development of AI at this point seems to be exponential and a lot of good things can be said about democracy, but the speed of work is not exponential,” adds Margrethe Vestager, indicating that “this is not to criticize anyone, […] it just means there are a huge number of issues to be discussed when it comes to making full use” of this technology.

In anticipation of this meeting, which takes place in Lulea, within the scope of the Swedish presidency of the Council, the executive vice president points out that AI “has been a constant on the agenda” between the EU and the United States, namely because “there is an enormous potential for productivity and one of the concerns in the European Union is that productivity growth has been quite slow”.

Also slow has been the pace of negotiations at community level on this law proposed two years ago, which is why, according to Margrethe Vestager, starting negotiations before the summer would make it possible to “begin the technical work”, with a view to political agreements, and “the Council is much closer to the Commission’s proposal” than Parliament.

In April 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal to regulate AI systems, the first legislation at EU level and which aims to safeguard the EU’s fundamental values ​​and rights and the safety of users, forcing systems considered to be high risk to comply with mandatory requirements related to its reliability.

This will therefore be the first regulation directed at AI, despite the fact that the creators and those responsible for the development of this technology are already subject to European legislation on fundamental rights, consumer protection and rules on the safety of products and of responsability.

It is expected that additional requirements will be introduced to mitigate risks, such as the existence of human supervision or the obligation of clear information on the capabilities and limitations of artificial intelligence.

AI has been increasingly used in areas such as entertainment (customization of content), online commerce (prediction of consumer tastes), home appliances (intelligent programming) and electronic equipment (use of virtual assistants such as Siri or Alexa, among others).

The European Commission has been trying to strengthen cooperation between Member States regarding AI, but there is still no common legal framework, so the aim is to move from a voluntary approach to the regulatory sphere.