The risks of unregulated artificial intelligence: what does the EU offer?

No one doubts the benefits of using artificial intelligence in all aspects of everyday life. It is one of the technologies that has generated the most interest because of the advancements it brings to society in general and the economy.

Its rapid progress, for better or for worse, has resulted in drastic changes and digital transformation in key sectors such as industry, transport, finance, health or safety. But there are ethical challenges you must face.

The European Commission, as was the case in its time with the Data Protection Law (GDPR), has been working for some time on how to regulate the use and applications of artificial intelligence with legal measures ensuring an environment conducive to its application and deployment.

No todo vale y la regulación de la UE pretende Garantizar un enfoque humano con una visión muy centrada en la protección de la privacidad, lejos de otras normativas ya existentes como la de Estados Unidos o la China, esta última con herramientas de control que aplica sobre population.

MEPs want the rules to cover respect for the intervention and human supervision. Indeed, the project proposes to guarantee security, transparency and accountability to avoid any form of bias or discrimination.

What are the risks of artificial intelligence?

Computers and data centers have the capacity to perform certain functions, such as processing data, faster and with greater precision than a human. In this way, the use of artificial intelligence has become common to process information faster.

However, if we leave all information in the hands of bots and technologies of this type, we run the risk of making decisions without human supervision. Machine learning is based on pattern recognition. Problems arise when available data reflects social biases or is used to cause harm.

Artificial intelligence

In this way, automated decision making could lead to social divisions. Some recruitment algorithms reproduce the discriminatory pay gap that exists with women in today’s society.

What does the European Union offer?

Parliament calls for a plan to assess the risks associated with AI and automated decision-making, as well as a common approach to harness the benefits of its use and mitigate the risks.

The Commission intends to outline the lines of action so that citizens are protected against unfair or discriminatory commercial practices, or against the risks involved in the professional services offered based on AI.

In addition, among the measures it introduces, the ban on AI stands out in certain uses considered high risk, such as mass surveillance, as well as those that cause harm to people by manipulating their behavior, their opinions. or their decisions.

How is artificial intelligence used?

Artificial intelligence can come in two ways. On the one hand, integrated in robots, drones, computer systems, autonomous vehicles or IoT devices (connected to the Internet).

On the other hand, AI is integrated in the form of Software in digital assistants, Software image analysis, search engines, speech recognition systems or digital recognition.

In this way, even if we are not aware, artificial intelligence is present in many actions that we take throughout the day. Here are a few examples that you may not have known about until now.

  • Internet shopping and advertising. Artificial intelligence is widely used to create personalized recommendations based, for example, on previous research and purchases, as well as other behaviors on the network. In addition, AI is very important in the commerce sector, to optimize product stock, plan inventories and improve logistics and parcel delivery.
  • Personal digital assistants. Mobile phones and home speakers with voice assistants use AI to deliver more relevant and personalized responses. In this way, they help organize the routines of their owners.
  • Web searches. Search engines learn from the large amount of data provided by their users to provide more relevant search results. The sheer amount of information they collect in each session is surprising.
  • Autonomous vehicles. While autonomous vehicles are not yet widespread, cars are already using AI-powered safety features. For example, the EU has helped finance the VI-DAS vision-based driver assistance system, which detects potentially dangerous situations and accidents.
  • Fight fake news. Some artificial intelligence applications can detect fake news and disinformation by extracting information from social media, searching for sensational or alarming words, and identifying unauthorized sources or digital violence.

Gender-based violence and harassment have also reached the Internet. Is the call digital violence, but what legal implications does it have?. We propose in this article a series of measures on how to avoid crime online, Sms or fraudulent calls.

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