EU Artificial Intelligence Regulation Risks Undermining Social Safety Net - AI Summary

The European Union's (EU) proposed plan to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to undermine the bloc's social safety net, and is ill-equipped to protect people from surveillance and discrimination, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Drawing on case studies from Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland and the UK, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) found that Europe's trend towards automation is discriminating against people in need of social security support, compromising their privacy, and making it harder for them to obtain government assistance. Self-regulation not good enough The report echoes claims made by digital civil rights experts, who previously told Computer Weekly the regulatory proposal is stacked in favour of organisations – both public and private – that develop and deploy AI technologies, which are essentially being tasked with box-ticking exercises, while ordinary people are offered little in the way of protection or redress. "As a result, it is likely that critically important information about a broad range of law enforcement technologies that could impact human rights, including criminal risk assessment tools and crime analytics software that parse large datasets to detect patterns of suspicious behaviour, would remain secret," it said. However, according to Laure Baudrihaye-Gérard, legal and policy director at NGO Fair Trials, the extension of Europol's mandate in combination with the AIA's proposed exemptions would effectively allow the crime agency to operate with little accountability and oversight when it came to developing and using AI for policing.