Europe became the first continent to agree on a set of rules to limit the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), named A.I. Act, on Dec. 8, 2023.
Members of the European Parliament and representatives of the 27 countries came together during the initial session, which lasted 22 hours, and finished the second session two days later, finalizing the premises of the agreement.
“Today’s political deal marks the beginning of important and necessary technical work on crucial details of the AI Act,” said Daniel Friedlaender, the European head of a tech industry lobby group named Sky.
With AI evolving everyday, researchers are paying more attention to the dangers of AI. Along with researchers, United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister (PM) Rishi Sunak outlined the dangers AI poses to humanity during a speech on Oct. 26, 2023.
“AI could make it easier to build chemical or biological weapons,” said Sunak. “AI could [be used] to spread fear and destruction on an even greater scale.”
Although no official rules are yet open to the public, Europe drafted their first rulebook for limiting the use of AI in 2021 after a proposal from the European Commission. With AI developing everyday, they were required to change many of the initial rules.
“The aim is to turn the EU into a global hub for trustworthy AI,” wrote European Parliament.
A.I. Act, originally made to reduce the level of AI risks, changed to expand its rules to foundation models, where the product output depends on human input, such as ChatGPT. The new rules differentiate each AI system between minimal risks, high risks, and unacceptable risks.
“AI systems considered a clear threat to the fundamental rights of people will be banned,” wrote the European Commission. “This includes applications that manipulate human behavior [and] emotion recognition systems at the workplace.”
The European Parliament will vote on A.I. Act early next year and the law, if passed, will take effect in 2025 at the earliest. Countries like the U.S. and China are also working on their own rulebook to limit AI use but are far behind Europe in terms of passing a law in the next few years.
