The trouble with AI: Why we need new laws to stop algorithms ruining our lives

Stronger action needs to be taken to stop technologies like facial recognition from being used to violate fundamental human rights, because the ethics charters currently adopted by businesses and governments won't cut it, warns a new report from digital rights organization Access Now. The past few years have seen "ethical AI" become a hot topic, with requirements such as oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, or accountability being added to codes of conduct for private and public organizations alike. From 5% in 2019, in fact, the proportion of organizations that now have an AI ethics charter has jumped to 45% in 2020. The EU's guidelines for "Trustworthy AI" have informed many of these documents; in addition, the European bloc recently published a white paper on artificial intelligence presenting a so-called "European framework for AI", with ethics at its core. How much real change has happened as a result of those ethical guidelines is up for debate.