Breaking Down the World's First Proposal for Regulating Artificial Intelligence

Today, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are ubiquitous across sectors--used for everything from determining an individual's credit worthiness to enabling law enforcement surveillance--and rapidly evolving. Despite this, few nations have rules in place to oversee these systems or mitigate the harms they could cause. On April 21, the European Commission released a draft of its proposed AI regulation, the world's first legal framework addressing the risks posed by artificial intelligence. The draft regulation makes some notable strides, prohibiting the use of certain harmful AI systems and reining in harmful uses of some high-risk algorithmic systems. However, the Commission's proposed regulation displays gaps which, if not addressed, could limit its effectiveness in holding some of the biggest developers and deployers of algorithmic systems accountable.