EU AI Act Explained: A Guide to the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence in Europe


Book Description

Demystifying the EU AI Act: A Guide to Responsible Artificial Intelligence.This book dives into the groundbreaking EU AI Act, the first comprehensive legal framework for regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world. It explores the growing influence of AI in our lives, highlighting its potential benefits and the challenges it poses. Part 1 sets the stage by examining the rapid rise of AI and the need for regulations to ensure its responsible development and deployment. It then delves into the EU's approach to technology regulation, emphasizing the bloc's focus on consumer protection and ethical considerations. Part 2 delves into the core of the EU AI Act. It explains the Act's key objectives, its risk-based classification system for AI systems (high-risk vs. low-risk), and the specific obligations for high-risk systems. This includes requirements for robust risk management, data governance, and human oversight to mitigate potential risks like bias and algorithmic manipulation. The book also details the types of AI systems explicitly prohibited by the Act, such as social scoring and real-time mass surveillance. Part 3 explores the broader implications of the EU AI Act. It examines how the Act prioritizes the protection of fundamental rights like privacy and non-discrimination. It then analyzes the potential impact on businesses, considering compliance costs and the opportunities for responsible AI development to enhance brand reputation. Finally, the book looks to the future, discussing how the EU AI Act might serve as a model for global AI regulation and the need for ongoing adaptation to keep pace with the rapid evolution of AI technology. By exploring the EU AI Act, this book provides valuable insights for anyone interested in the responsible development and use of AI. It offers a comprehensive overview of the Act's provisions and their potential impact on stakeholders, including businesses, developers, and policymakers.




The EU AI Act


Book Description

The European Union (“EU”) Artificial Intelligence Act (the AI Act) is a legal medley. Under the banner of risk-based regulation, the AI Act combines two repertoires of European Union (EU) law, namely product safety and fundamental rights protection. Like a medley, the AI Act attempts to combine the best features of both repertoires. But like a medley, the AI Act risks delivering insufficient levels of both product safety or fundamental rights protection. This article describes these issues by reference to three classical issues of law and technology. Some adjustments to the text and spirit of the AI Act are suggested.




The Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI)


Book Description

On the 17 of July 2020, the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) presented their final Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. Following a piloting process where over 350 stakeholders participated, an earlier prototype of the list was revised and translated into a tool to support AI developers and deployers in developing Trustworthy AI. The tool supports the actionability the key requirements outlined by the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI), presented by the High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) presented to the European Commission, in April 2019. The Ethics Guidelines introduced the concept of Trustworthy AI, based on seven key requirements: human agency and oversight technical robustness and safety privacy and data governance transparency diversity, non-discrimination and fairness environmental and societal well-being and accountability Through the Assessment List for Trustworthy AI (ALTAI), AI principles are translated into an accessible and dynamic checklist that guides developers and deployers of AI in implementing such principles in practice. ALTAI will help to ensure that users benefit from AI without being exposed to unnecessary risks by indicating a set of concrete steps for self-assessment. Download the Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI) (.pdf) The ALTAI is also available in a web-based tool version. More on the ALTAI web-based tool: https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/european-ai-alliance/pages/altai-assessment-list-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence




EU Policy and Legal Framework for Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Related Technologies - The AI Act


Book Description

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can benefit our society and economy, but also brings with it new challenges and raises legal and ethical questions. According to the author of this comprehensive analysis, it is imperative to ensure that AI is developed and applied in an appropriate legal and regulatory framework that promotes innovation and investment and, at the same time, addresses the risks associated with certain uses of AI-related technologies. Essential to understanding the relationship between policy and law, this book traces the evolution of EU policy on artificial intelligence and robotics, focusing in particular on the EU’s ethical framework for AI, which defines trust as a prerequisite for ensuring a human-centric approach. The main part of the book provides a thorough and systematic analysis of the Commission’s 2021 proposed AI Act, which establishes harmonised rules for the development, placement on the market and use of AI systems in the EU. The author painstakingly compares the Commission’s proposed AI Act with the numerous “compromise” proposals of the Council of the European Union, leading to the final version of the Council’s AI Act (general approach) and its formal adoption on 6 December 2022. The author also examines with extraordinary detail the amendments proposed by the relevant committees and political groups of the European Parliament, revealing the position the Parliament is likely to adopt in the forthcoming negotiations with the Commission and the Council on the text of the AI Act. Numerous legislative and policy documents are presented in detail, while the analysis also considers the comments made by all interested parties (e.g. the European Commission, Council of the European Union, European Parliament, governmental organisations, national competent authorities, and stakeholders/actors with different/conflicting interests, such as corporations, business and consumer associations, civil society and other non-profit organisations). In the course of its in-depth analysis, this book will provide readers with crucial insight into the reasons behind the European Institutions’ different approaches and the often contradictory interests of stakeholders. Because the policy arguments are carefully balanced and drafted with scrupulous care, this volume will establish itself as a reference resource to be consulted for years to come.




Unboxing Artificial Intelligence: 10 steps to protect human rights


Book Description

Artificial intelligence (AI) involves opportunities as well as risks; human rights should be strengthened by AI, not undermined. This Recommendation on AI and human rights provides guidance on the way in which the negative impact of AI systems on human rights can be prevented or mitigated, focusing on 10 key areas of action.




Regulating Artificial Intelligence


Book Description

This book assesses the normative and practical challenges for artificial intelligence (AI) regulation, offers comprehensive information on the laws that currently shape or restrict the design or use of AI, and develops policy recommendations for those areas in which regulation is most urgently needed. By gathering contributions from scholars who are experts in their respective fields of legal research, it demonstrates that AI regulation is not a specialized sub-discipline, but affects the entire legal system and thus concerns all lawyers. Machine learning-based technology, which lies at the heart of what is commonly referred to as AI, is increasingly being employed to make policy and business decisions with broad social impacts, and therefore runs the risk of causing wide-scale damage. At the same time, AI technology is becoming more and more complex and difficult to understand, making it harder to determine whether or not it is being used in accordance with the law. In light of this situation, even tech enthusiasts are calling for stricter regulation of AI. Legislators, too, are stepping in and have begun to pass AI laws, including the prohibition of automated decision-making systems in Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation, the New York City AI transparency bill, and the 2017 amendments to the German Cartel Act and German Administrative Procedure Act. While the belief that something needs to be done is widely shared, there is far less clarity about what exactly can or should be done, or what effective regulation might look like. The book is divided into two major parts, the first of which focuses on features common to most AI systems, and explores how they relate to the legal framework for data-driven technologies, which already exists in the form of (national and supra-national) constitutional law, EU data protection and competition law, and anti-discrimination law. In the second part, the book examines in detail a number of relevant sectors in which AI is increasingly shaping decision-making processes, ranging from the notorious social media and the legal, financial and healthcare industries, to fields like law enforcement and tax law, in which we can observe how regulation by AI is becoming a reality.




Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence and the European Union AI Act


Book Description

Governments, international organisations, corporations, and other institutions around the globe are drawing up frameworks for 'trustworthy' Artificial Intelligence (AI). This effort follows an explicit strategic premise: raise the trustworthiness of AI and people will trust it more, thus use it more, and unlock the technology's economic and social potential. With its proposed AI Act, the European Union (EU) has put itself at the forefront of this regulatory development. Adopting a risk-based approach towards AI, the EU chose to understand trustworthiness of AI in terms of the acceptability of its risks. This conflation of trustworthiness with acceptability of risk invites further reflection. Based on a narrative systematic literature review on institutional trust and the use of AI in the public sector, this paper argues that the EU adopted a simplistic conceptualisation of trust and is overselling its regulatory ambition. The AI Act is a proposal for technocratic risk-regulation which by itself is unlikely to effectively signal trustworthiness or raise actual levels of trust in citizens. This paper makes four contributions. First, it reconstructs the conflation of 'trustworthiness' with the 'acceptability of risks' in the EU's AI policy. Second, with a view on the extreme heterogeneity of trust research, the paper develops a prescriptive set of variables for reviewing trust research in the context of AI. Third, it then uses those variables as a structure for a narrative review of prior research on trust and trustworthiness in AI in the public sector. Fourth, the paper relates the findings of the review to the EU's AI policy. It states the uncertain prospects for the AI Act to be successful in engineering citizen's trust. There remains a threat of misalignment between levels of actual trust and the trustworthiness of applied AI. The conflation of 'trustworthiness' with the 'acceptability of risks' in the AI Act will thus be shown to be inadequate.




Referral Guidelines for Imaging


Book Description

This booklet sets out referral guidelines that can be used by health professionals qualified to refer patients for imaging. It has evolved from the booklet 'Making the best use of a department of clinical radiology: guidelines for doctors' published by the Royal College of Radiologists in 1998 and can be adopted as a model for Member States. The EU Council Directive 1997/43/EURATOM declared that Member States shall promote the establishment and use of diagnostic reference levels for radiological examinations and guidance thereof. These referral guidelines can be used for that purpose.




The Brussels Effect


Book Description

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.




The Reasonable Robot


Book Description

Argues that treating people and artificial intelligence differently under the law results in unexpected and harmful outcomes for social welfare.