Commission's draft White Paper on AI unveiled

The draft version of the white paper focuses on the existing and future comprehensive legislative framework for artificial intelligence and the access to data and specific policy actions in support of the development of artificial intelligence in Europe.
 
Several measures are put forward by the European Commission to solve key issues related to the policy and legislative framework:

1. Limitations of scope as regards fundamental rights;
2. Limitations of scope with respect to products. Services based on artificial intelligence (e.g. health services) are not taken into account in the EU product safety legislation;
3. Uncertainty as regards the division of responsibilities between different economic operators in the supply chain;
4. Changing nature of products. The integration of software into products can modify the functioning of products during their lifecycle;
5. Emergence of new risks (cyber threats, personal safety risks, etc);
6. Difficulties linked to enforcement;

 
The leak of the Commission’s draft white paper follows a period of public discussion on how to deal with the future challenges of Artificial Intelligence. The Commission draft white paper on artificial intelligence is in line with the willingness of EU Member States to tackle the EU industries backlog in the field.
 
However, the paper outlines a quite severe and hard approach regarding the use of AI in the public sector and foresees the establishment of high AI standards when it comes to transparency and accountability. This is not surprising following the careful approach the Commission took when first looking into ethical aspects of AI as well its approach to build trust in a human-centric AI.
 
Different objectives will be implemented through regulatory proposals and policy actions during the mandate of the European Commission.

The draft version of the White Paper is available here