GPAI: European Union and the use of artificial intelligence: A press release on fines and transparency in high-impact general-purpose AI systems

The European Union and the people using artificial intelligence reached an agreement on the details of the Act. It’s a milestone law that, lawmakers hope, will create a blueprint for the rest of the world.

According to the press release, negotiators established obligations for “high-impact” general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems that meet certain benchmarks, like risk assessments, adversarial testing, incident reports, and more. It also mandates transparency to those systems that include creating technical documents and detailed summaries about the content used for training, something companies like Openai have not done yet.

The citizens should have a right to launch complaints about the systems that affect their rights, as well as get explanations about decisions on high-risk systems.

The press release didn’t go into detail about how all that would work or what the benchmarks are, but it did note a framework for fines if companies break the rules. They vary based on the violation and size of the company and can range from 35 million euros or 7 percent of global revenue, to 7.5 million euros or 1.5 percent of global revenue of turnover.

A Provisional Agreement on Artificial Intelligence, Biometrics, and Social Algorithms. Comments on Friday’s EU Parliament Press Conference

The use of artificial intelligence is not allowed in many applications, such as the categorization of a job by a person’s race, religion, or political beliefs, or the creation of a “social scoring” system. The last two banned bullet points are AI systems that “manipulate human behavior to circumvent their free will” or “exploit the vulnerabilities of people.” The rules also include a list of safeguards and exemptions for law enforcement use of biometric systems, either in real-time or to search for evidence in recordings.

It’s expected that a final deal will be reached before the end of the year. Even then, the law likely won’t come into force until 2025 at the earliest.

Now that a provisional agreement has been reached, more negotiations will still be required, including votes by Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees.

Negotiations over rules for live and general purpose Artificial Intelligence models have become very disagreeable. Ahead of Friday’s announcement, the press conference announcing the agreement was delayed because the debate on these was still being debated.

Legislators from the EU parliament, the Council, and Commission spent more than 36 hours in total hammering out the new legislation after months of debate. The EU parliament election is in the new year, and it’s important to strike a deal before then.

The fines can be 7 percent of the company’s global turnover. The bans on prohibited AI will take effect in six months, the transparency requirements in 12 months, and the full set of rules in around two years.

New measures to make it easier to protect copyright holders from generative artificial intelligence and to make general purpose Artificial Intelligence systems more transparent about their energy use were also included.

The European Commission and the role of the European Union as a standard setting: a press conference on the EU’s role in the global standard setting

The importance of Europe’s role as a global standard setting was emphasized by the European Commissioner in a press conference.