The European Parliament has called on lawmakers in the European Union to ban automated facial recognition in public spaces and to enforce strict safeguards for police use of artificial intelligence. MEPs voted in favor of the non-binding resolution by 377-248, with 62 abstentions. The MEPs said citizens should only be monitored when they're suspected of a crime. They cited concerns over algorithmic bias in AI and argued that both human supervision and legal protections are required to avoid discrimination. The politicians noted there's evidence suggesting AI-based identification systems misidentify minority ethnic groups, LGBTI people, seniors and women at higher rates.

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.

DETROIT United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams said on Thursday the union is contacting workers at Silicon Valley electric car maker Tesla Inc, and plans to boost efforts to convince U.S. consumers not to buy vehicles built in other countries, including those sold by the Detroit automakers.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European lawmakers called on Thursday for EU-wide legislation to regulate the rise of robots, including an ethical framework for their development and deployment and the establishment of liability for the actions of robots including self-driving cars.