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European Union member states agreed on Tuesday the world’s first major law regulating artificial intelligence, as agencies around the world race to impose restrictions on the technology.
The European Council said it has finally approved the Artificial Intelligence Act, a groundbreaking regulation that aims to introduce the first comprehensive set of rules for artificial intelligence.
“The passage of the Artificial Intelligence Bill is an important milestone for the European Union,” Belgian Digital Minister Mathieu Michel said in a statement on Tuesday.
Michel added: “With the Artificial Intelligence Bill, Europe is underlining the importance of trust, transparency and accountability when dealing with new technologies, while ensuring that this rapidly changing technology can thrive and foster European innovation.”
The Artificial Intelligence Bill takes a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence, meaning that different applications of the technology will be treated differently based on the threat they pose to society.
The law bans the application of artificial intelligence where the level of risk is deemed “unacceptable.” Unacceptable forms of AI applications have so-called “social scoring” systems that rank citizens based on aggregation and analysis of data, predictive policing, and emotion recognition in the workplace and schools.
High-risk AI systems, covering self-driving cars or medical devices, are assessed based on the risk they pose to citizens’ health, safety and fundamental rights. They also include applications of AI in financial services and education, where AI algorithms carry risks of bias.
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