The US warned the European Union that its proposed law to regulate artificial intelligence would favor companies with the resources to cover the costs of compliance while hurting smaller firms, according to previously undisclosed documents. The US analysis focuses mostly on the European Parliament version of the AI Act, which includes rules on generative AI. Some rules in the parliament law are based on terms that are "vague or undefined," according to the documents, which were obtained by Bloomberg News. The analysis is Washington's most detailed position on the EU legislation that could set the tone for other countries writing rules for AI. One US concern is that the European Parliament focuses on how AI models are developed, whereas the US would prefer an approach that focuses on the risk involved in how these models are actually used.

Deepfakes, facial recognition and existential threat: politicians, watchdogs and the public must confront daunting issues when it comes to regulating artificial intelligence. Tech regulation has a history of lagging the industry, with the the UK's online safety bill and the EU's Digital Services Act only just arriving almost two decades after the launch of Facebook. AI is streaking ahead as well. ChatGPT already has more than 100 million users, the pope is in a puffer jacket and an array of experts have warned that the AI race is getting out of control. But at least the European Union, as is often the case with tech, is making a start with the AI Act.

Members of the European Parliament closed several critical parts of the AI regulation at a political meeting on Thursday (13 April), but the prohibited uses of AI could potentially divide the house. The AI Act is a landmark legislation to regulate Artificial Intelligence based on its capacity to cause harm, and while MEPs are approaching a political deal on the file with a key committee vote scheduled for 26 April, the plenary adoption will be challenging. The most politically sensitive part discussed during the political meeting with all the groups on Thursday was prohibited practices, applications deemed to pose an unacceptable risk. High-risk categorisation, enforcement and governance are largely settled. EU lawmakers in the leading European Parliament committees are voting on the political agreement on the AI Act on 26 April, with many questions being settled but a few critical issues still open. The German liberals proposed introducing a provision banning "the use of an AI system for the general monitoring, detection and interpretation of private content in interpersonal communication services, including all measures that would undermine end-to-end encryption."

EU lawmakers held their first political debate on the AI Act on Wednesday (5 October) as the discussion moved to more sensitive topics like the highly debated issue of biometric recognition. The AI Act is a landmark EU legislation intended to regulate Artificial Intelligence introducing a series of obligations proportional to the potential harm of the technologies' applications. So far, the co-rapporteurs of the European Parliament, the social democrat Brando Benifei and the liberal Dragoș Tudorache, have limited the discussion to the more technical aspects, hoping to build momentum before addressing the more political hurdles. This approach was not without its successes since the file progressed in several parts. In the meeting, the MEPs formally agreed on the first two batches of compromises on administrative procedures, conformity assessment, standards, and certificates.

The Parliament has in a statement said that "the EU has fallen behind in the global race for tech leadership. "There is a risk that standards will be developed elsewhere, often by non-democratic actors, while MEPs believe the EU needs to act as a global standard-setter in AI", the Parliament said. The MEPs identified policy options that could unlock AI's potential in health, the environment and climate change, to help combat pandemics and global hunger, and enhance people's quality of life through personalised medicine. MEPs say that, combined with the necessary support infrastructure, education and training, AI can increase capital and labour productivity, innovation, sustainable growth and job creation. However, several studies show citizens' hesitation and sometimes fear when facing the potential of artificial intelligence. "The EU should not always regulate AI as a technology and the level of regulatory intervention should be proportionate to the type of risk associated with the ...

An internal report on Artificial Intelligence recently approved by a special committee of the European Parliament embodies a push from EU lawmakers and member states to make regulation on artificial intelligence less burdensome and more innovation-friendly. Christian Democrat MEP Axel Voss has been leading the charge against "overburdening" companies with excessive regulation, arguing that the EU regulatory environment should leave more room for innovation. That was the underlying motive of an own-initiative report on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age, recently approved in the AIDA committee, a parliamentary body set up in 2020, under Voss' leadership. "We need a better regulatory framework that learns also from the mistakes of the GDPR," Voss said while presenting the report. Instead of overburdening companies, the AI Act should give clear guidance and should leave space for innovation, he added.

With the drafting of the "Artificial Intelligence Act" (April 2021), the European Commission has made its first attempt at comprehensively regulating the expansive world of AI. Whilst the draft legislation extensively addresses the regulation and classification of AI technology, it does not mention another area of concern regarding Artificial Intelligence, namely intellectual property rights. Identifying IP rights as a major issue, the EU Parliament adopted a resolution on IP rights for the development of AI technologies in October 2020. In it, the Parliament called upon the Commission to ensure a high level protection of intellectual property rights when regulating AI. Despite the report being forwarded to the Commission well before it finalized its proposal for the "Artificial Intelligence Act", the protection of intellectual property rights is not mentioned in the draft legislation. Merely an Annex published alongside it briefly mentions the challenges of protecting intellectual property rights in connection with AI-assisted outputs.

The EU Parliament has voted in favor of a resolution that essentially calls for the ban of AI-powered biometric mass surveillance technologies such as facial recognition systems in the continent. The MEPs (members of the European parliament) are worried about discrimination, bias, and injustice that arise from AI-based predictive policing, and their concerns are based on numerous real examples. For history, 377 MEPs voted in favor, 248 against, and 62 were absent. Vendors of AI-based facial recognition solutions have admitted that algorithm bias has plagued their systems for years and have made efforts to solve the problem through diverse data sets and machine learning optimizations. However, the discriminatory rates are still too high to be acceptable in any important deployment context.

After a successful 2016 first edition, our next summer school cohort on The Regulation of Robotics in Europe: Legal, Ethical and Economic Implications will take place in Pisa at the Scuola Sant'Anna, from 3- 8 July. When the Robolaw project came to an end – and we presented our results before the European Parliament – we clearly perceived that a leap was needed not only in some approaches to regulation but also in the way social scientists, as well as engineers, are trained. Indeed, in order to undergo technical analysis in law and robotics, without being lured into science fiction, an adequate understanding of the peculiarities of the systems being studied is required. A bottom-up approach, like the one adopted by Robolaw and its guidelines, is essential. Social scientists, and lawyers in particular, often lack such knowledge and thus tend to either make unreasonable assumptions – of technological developments that are farfetched or simply unrealistic – or misperceive what the pivoting point in the analysis is going to be.

Machines, Robotic an AI: Technology is part of our lives. Like personal assistants, our smartphones and apps, computers and social media, ease our days, help us keeping in contact with friends and acquaintances, manage our working schedules, our workouts, and even help us find a job. In a society where human interaction with technology is increasing, challenges are a natural consequence. Robots have been used for quite some years now in the industry, autonomously performing repetitive tasks, in shop floors, where collaborative robots can work in close connection with humans, in medicine, just think about surgical robots, and even in our homes, where they clean our floors giving us some additional free time. Within this picture, artificial intelligence is just another step further.