European deputies announced their position during a vote in committee on Thursday morning in Strasbourg, which will be confirmed during a plenary session in June, after which difficult negotiations between the various institutions will begin.
The European project to regulate artificial intelligence passed a crucial milestone Thursday by getting its first green light from members of the European Parliament who called for new restrictions and better consideration of the GPT chat programme.
The European Union seeks to be the first in the world to adopt a comprehensive legal framework to limit the excesses of artificial intelligence (AI) while ensuring innovation.
Brussels proposed an ambitious bill two years ago, but its lesson has been delayed, and has been postponed in recent months due to controversy over the dangers of generative artificial intelligence capable of creating texts or images. And EU member states only set their position at the end of 2022.
Tough negotiations
European deputies announced their position during a vote in committee on Thursday morning in Strasbourg, which will be confirmed during a plenary session in June, after which difficult negotiations between the various institutions will begin.
“We have received more than 3,000 amendments. It is enough to turn on the TV, every day we see the importance of this file for citizens,” said Dragos Todorac, co-rapporteur of the text.
Co-Rapporteur Brando Benefe also said that “Europe wants a human-based, ethical approach”.
AI systems are as interesting as they are concerned, because of their incredibly complex technology. If these systems can save lives by making a quantum leap in diagnosing diseases, they may also be exploited by authoritarian regimes to exercise mass surveillance of citizens.
Many concerns
Unveiled at the end of last year, ChatGBT sparked widespread interest in the world in generative AI, due to its ability to generate elaborate texts such as emails, articles, poems, informational programs, or translations, in just seconds.
But the posting of fake images on social media, more real than the real ones, generated by apps such as Midjourney, has warned of the dangers of manipulating public opinion.
Scientific figures have also called for suspending the development of stronger systems, pending the issuance of a law to better regulate them.
And confirms the position of the Parliament in its broad outlines of the Commission’s approach. The text builds on existing rules on product safety and will impose primarily company-based controls.
Law details
At the heart of the project is a list of rules imposed only on applications that companies consider themselves to be “high risk” based on the standards of the legislator.
For the European Commission it will concern all systems used in sensitive areas such as critical infrastructures, education, human resources, law enforcement or immigration management. Among the obligations: verifying human-machine control, creating technical documentation or even creating a risk management system.
MEPs also want commitments to be limited to products that may threaten security, health or fundamental rights.
The European Parliament also intends to take better account of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT by requiring a specific regime of commitments such as those under high stakes regimes.
European MPs want to compel service providers to protect against illegal content and disclosure of copyright-protected data (scientific texts, music, images, etc.) used to develop their algorithms.
The Commission’s proposal, unveiled in April 2021, provides for a framework for artificial intelligence systems that interact with humans. It would require them to inform the user that they are in contact with a machine and would force applications creating images to specify that they were created artificially.
