European Parliament approves EU AI Act: What impact on the enterprise?

The act also enshrines the right of consumers to make complaints about the inappropriate use of AI by businesses, and to receive meaningful explanations for decisions taken by an AI that affect their rights.

The final text’s own meaningful explanation defines an AI as “a machine-based system designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments.”

Lawmakers took a risk-based approach, leading to certain banned practices in the final text. Scraping facial images from the internet or CCTV to create facial recognition databases, social scoring, and AI that manipulates human behavior or exploits people’s vulnerabilities will be prohibited.

Other areas of high-risk AI uses include critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment, essential services such as healthcare or banking, as well as law enforcement, migration and border management, justice, and democratic processes.

Limitations on AI in the workplace

Due to “the imbalance of power,” explicit provisions are laid down to ensure greater employee protection as well. AI systems will not be able to be used to recognize emotions in the workplace or in education.

“The intrusive nature of these systems … could lead to detrimental or unfavorable treatment of certain natural persons or whole groups thereof. Therefore, the placing on the market, putting into service, or use of AI systems intended to be used to detect the emotional state of individuals in situations related to the workplace and education should be prohibited. This prohibition should not cover AI systems placed on the market strictly for medical or safety reasons, such as systems intended for therapeutic use,” says the law.

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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