The European Parliament has passed the landmark rules for artificial intelligence, called the EU AI Act, clearing a major obstacle for the first formal regulation of Artificial Intelligence in the West to become law.
Artificial Intelligence has become a key battleground in the global technology industry as firms compete for a leading position in developing the technology — especially generative AI, which can create new content from user prompts. The rules are the first wholesome regulations for AI.
What generative AI is capable of has wowed academics, businesses and even students. But it has also increased worries about job displacement, prejudices, misinformation, and bias.
During a critical vote, the European Parliament adopted the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act with 499 votes in favor, 93 abstentions, and 28 against. The AI regulation is far from becoming formal law, but it is most likely to be one of the first formal rules for tech globally.
The members of the European Parliament agreed to bring generative AI tools such as ChatGPT under sufficient restrictions. Generative AI developers need to submit their systems for review before commercial release.
The European Parliament also agreed to hold firm with a ban on real-time biometric identification systems and controversial social scoring systems.
The laws have greater implications for developers of generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Jens-Henrik Jeppesen, senior director of public policy at Workday, said, “The AI Act aims to build safeguards on the development and use of these technologies to ensure we have an innovation-friendly environment for these technologies such that society can benefit from them. Those are the right goals.”
Github CEO Thomas Dohmke said, “We encourage the European Union and the US government to move really fast and listen to those that built the technology, not only in the commercial business but also in universities, in the open-source communities.”
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently expressed ambition to make the U.K. the geographical home of AI safety regulation. The UK government is also preparing to hold a global summit on Artificial Intelligence safety later this year.
