How the EU's AI ethics guidelines will impact US businesses

This week, the European Union published a set of ethical guidelines detailing how businesses and governments can achieve trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI)--that is, AI that is lawful, ethical, and socially and technologically robust. While these guidelines are not laws, they set out a framework for lawmakers and companies to achieve trustworthy AI. "The EU's new Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI are a considered and constructive step toward addressing the impact of trustworthy AI on humankind, and toward laying the groundwork for necessary further discussion between key stakeholders in the private, public and governmental sectors," Juan Miguel de Joya, a consultant at the International Telecommunication Union and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery's US Technology Policy Committee, told TechRepublic. SEE: Artificial intelligence: A business leader's guide (free PDF) (TechRepublic) The EU's new guidelines should start conversations among businesses worldwide that may not have the resources to independently assess the impact of the technology, de Joya said. "Perhaps most fundamentally and significantly, release of the new guidelines is an opportunity for government, business, computing professionals and other stakeholders--particularly in the United States--to capture and channel the momentum of these discussions into real understanding of AI's potential and pitfalls," de Joya said. These guidelines are "a welcome, solid and significant step forward," Lorraine Kisselburgh, a visiting fellow in the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University, and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery's US Technology Policy Committee, told TechRepublic.