Artificial intelligence and automated decision making processes can pose certain threats to consumers. Find out how the European Parliament wants to protect them. What is artificial intelligence and why can it be dangerous? As learning algorithms can process data sets with precision and speed beyond human capacity, artificial intelligence (AI) applications have become increasingly common in finance, healthcare, education, the legal system and beyond. However, reliance on AI also carries risks, especially where decisions are made without human oversight.

Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee approved on Thursday a resolution addressing several challenges arising from the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) technologies. When consumers interact with an ADM system, they should be "properly informed about how it functions, about how to reach a human with decision-making powers, and about how the system's decisions can be checked and corrected", says the committee. Those systems should only use high-quality and unbiased data sets and "explainable and unbiased algorithms" in order to boost consumer trust and acceptance, states the resolution. Review structures should be set up to remedy possible mistakes in automated decisions. It should also be possible for consumers to seek human review of, and redress for, automated decisions that are final and permanent.