The European Union’s historic guidelines for artificial intelligence, known as the EU AI Act, have been passed by the European Parliament. With this, a significant barrier has been removed, paving the way for the first official regulation of AI in the West to become law.
As corporations fight for a leadership position in the development of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a significant battlefield in the global technology sector. This is especially true for generative AI, which can produce new material based on user suggestions. These laws are the first of their kind to cover all aspects of AI.
Academics, businesses, and even schoolchildren have been amazed by the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which include writing song lyrics and generating code. However, this has also resulted in concerns around the loss of jobs, biassed information, and inaccurate information.
The Artificial Intelligence Act was passed by Parliament on a pivotal vote on Wednesday with 499 votes in favour, 28 votes against, and 93 abstentions. Although there is a long way to go before the legislation is codified into law, it is expected to be one of the first official guidelines established for the technology on a worldwide scale.
The members of the European Parliament have reached an agreement to place further limits on generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Before placing their products on the market, creators of generative artificial intelligence will have to first have their systems evaluated.
In addition, the Parliament came to the conclusion that it would not budge from its position to outlaw contentious “social scoring” systems and real-time biometric identification systems.
Advocates for human rights expressed concern over a proposal by the European People’s Party to weaken the prohibition. In spite of this, lawmakers pushed on with it and ultimately reached a consensus to ban biometric tracking in all public places.
For those developing generative AI models, such as the Microsoft-supported ChatGPT model by OpenAI and the Bard model by Google, the regulations have significant repercussions.
The goal of the Artificial Intelligence Act, according to Jens-Henrik Jeppesen, senior director of public policy at Workday, is to “build safeguards on the development and use of these technologies to ensure that we have an innovation-friendly environment for these technologies so that society can benefit from them.”
After the vote, he said to CNBC, “I believe that those are the appropriate goals.”
The next step in the process is for negotiators to be present at EU institutions such as the EU executive body and the 27 member states.
Earlier in the day, the Chief Executive Officer of Github, Thomas Dohmke, issued a plea to European authorities, urging them to listen to the private sector as they move forward with guidelines for artificial intelligence.
Dohmke told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal that “we encourage the European Union and the US government to move really fast and listen to those that built the technology.” The people who produced the technology include not just those in the commercial company but also those in universities and in the open-source community.
This occurs at a time when nations all around the globe are attempting to establish regulations and standards pertaining to AI.
On Monday, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, made a brazen push to make the United Kingdom the “geographical home” of artificial intelligence safety regulation. In addition, preparations are being made by the government to host a worldwide conference on AI safety later this year.
