TAKASAKI, Japan, April 30 (Reuters) – The European Union
is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will
pave the way for the world’s first major artificial intelligence
(AI) law, the bloc’s tech regulation chief Margrethe Vestager
said on Sunday.
This follows a preliminary deal reached on Thursday by
members of the European Parliament to push through the draft of
the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act to a vote by a committee of
lawmakers on May 11. Parliament will then thrash out the bill’s
final details with EU member states and the European Commission
before it becomes law.
At a press conference after a Group of Seven digital
ministers’ meeting in Takasaki, Japan, Vestager said the EU AI
Act was “pro-innovation” since it seeks to mitigate the risks of
societal damage from emerging technologies.
Regulators around the world have been trying to find a
balance where governments could develop “guardrails” on emerging
artificial intelligence technology without stifling innovation.
“The reason why we have these guardrails for high-risk use
cases is that cleaning up … after a misuse by AI would be so
much more expensive and damaging than the use case of AI in
itself,” Vestager said.
While the EU AI Act is expected to be passed by this year,
lawyers have said it will take a few years for it to be
enforced. But Vestager said businesses could start considering
the implication of the new legislation.
“There was no reason to hesitate and to wait for the
legislation to be passed to accelerate the necessary discussions
to provide the changes in all the systems where AI will have an
enormous influence,” she said in the interview.
While research on AI has been going on for years, the sudden
popularity of generative AI applications such as OpenAI’S
ChatGPT and Midjourney have led to a scramble by lawmakers to
find ways to regulate any uncontrolled growth.
An organisation backed by Elon Musk and European lawmakers
involved in drafting the EU AI Act are among those to have
called for world leaders to collaborate to find ways to stop
advanced AI from creating disruptions.
Digital ministers of the G7 advanced nations on Sunday also
agreed to adopt “risk-based” regulation on AI, among the first
steps that could lead to global agreements on how to regulate
AI.
“Now when everyone has AI at their fingertips … there’s a
need for us to show the political leadership to make sure that
one can safely use AI and gain all the amazing possibilities of
improvement in productivity and better services,” Vestager said
in an interview with Reuters.
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya in Takasaki, Japan, and Supantha
Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by William Mallard and Emelia
Sithole-Matarise)
