Regulation of Artificial Intelligence in the European Union.
The European Union has introduced detailed regulations on the use of Artificial Intelligence, focusing mainly on facial recognition and behavior predictive algorithms
FOCAL POINT.
AI Act: the final yes
The European Union has reached a historic milestone with the passage of the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), marking a significant breakthrough in the regulation of advanced technologies. The European Parliament adopted the final text of the regulation with an overwhelming majority of 499 votes in favor, 28 against and 93 abstentions.
The new law aims to ensure that artificial intelligence systems are:
- secure and transparent: AI technologies must be developed and used in a way that ensures user security and process transparency;
- traceable and nondiscriminatory: AI systems must be traceable and designed to prevent discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, or other personal characteristics;
- environmentally friendly: environmental sustainability is a priority, with AI technologies required to minimize ecological impact.
FUTURE
Impacts and prohibitions of artificial intelligence in the European Union
In the European Union’s approach, Artificial Intelligence is seen as a tool in the service of humanity, with the goal of ensuring safety, transparency, traceability and respect for the environment. The final text includes a number of clear prohibitions.
The regulations establish differentiated obligations for providers and users based on the level of risk. Artificial intelligence systems that present an unacceptable risk to the safety of individuals are banned, including practices for so-called social scoring (i.e., ranking people based on their social behavior or to their personal characteristics). Systems based on behavioral predictive algorithms are also banned: these are all those systems based on profiling individuals, emotional recognition systems in judicial, work, educational, or border control contexts-all situations where artificial intelligence could risk misleading decisions. In addition, the use of real-time biometric recognition in public places is banned, while it is allowed only for the prosecution of serious crimes with judicial authorization.
Artificial intelligence systems that could harm people’s health, security, fundamental rights and the environment are considered high risk. This also includes the use of AI to influence voting in political campaigns.
Finally, basic generative models, such as ChatGPT, must meet additional transparency requirements, such as indicating that the content has been artificially generated and preventing the generation of illegal content.
Europe’s goal is to develop a human centric code that balances human rights with technological progress.
NET POV
Artificial intelligence: benefits and regulation
Artificial Intelligence represents a constantly evolving family of technologies with the potential to generate a wide range of economic and societal benefits. This phenomenon can offer significant competitive advantages to businesses and lead to positive outcomes in crucial areas such as health care, agriculture, education, infrastructure management, energy, transportation, security and more.
However, while artificial intelligence offers opportunities for large-scale digital transformation, it is critical to regulate its use to eliminate grey areas and ensure proper data protection and privacy.
This is especially important in the corporate environment, where the secrecy of sensitive data must be preserved. Future legislation should clearly define what categories of information can be processed by artificial intelligence systems and provide measures to protect personal data and other confidential information.
It is therefore hoped that governments and institutions will act swiftly to enact effective laws governing the development and application of artificial intelligence, thus ensuring that it is properly regulated and its benefits are fully exploited.
The passage of the AI Act represents a major step forward for the European Union in the management and regulation of advanced technologies. With this law, Europe demonstrates its commitment to ensuring the ethical, safe and sustainable use of artificial intelligence, positioning itself as a global leader in technology governance.
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