EESC opinion on White Paper on Artificial Intelligence

On 19 February 2020, the European Commission published a White Paper aiming to foster a European ecosystem of excellence and trust in AI and a Report on the safety and liability aspects of AI. The White Paper proposes:

• Measures that will streamline research, foster collaboration between Member States and increase investment into AI development and deployment;
• Policy options for a future EU regulatory framework that would determine the types of legal requirements that would apply to relevant actors, with a particular focus on high-risk applications. More information can be found here.

The European Economic and Social Committee adopted an opinion on the White Paper on 15/07/2020.

Main points:

The EESC:

• stresses the importance of enhancing investment, infrastructure, innovation and skills;
• urges the Commission to promote a new generation of AI systems that are knowledge-driven and reasoning-based, and that uphold human values and principles;
• calls on the Commission to: (i) foster multidisciplinarity in research; (ii) involve relevant stakeholders in the debate around AI and (iii) keep educating and informing the broader public on the opportunities and challenges of AI;
• urges the Commission to consider in more depth the impact of AI on the full spectrum of fundamental rights and freedoms;
• continues to oppose the introduction of any form of legal personality for AI;
• recommends that the Commission draw up a list of common characteristics of AI applications or uses that are considered intrinsically high risk, irrespective of the sector;
• is of the opinion that the widespread use of AI-driven biometric recognition for surveillance or to track, assess or categorise humans or human behaviour or emotions, should be prohibited;
• advocates early and close involvement of the social partners when introducing AI systems at workplaces and employees that will ultimately be working with the AI system;
• calls on the Commission to assume a leadership role so as to ensure better coordination within Europe of applied AI solutions and approaches used to fight the coronavirus pandemic.