Artificial intelligence needs boundaries

From the reader. Algorithms are already everywhere. They define communication, community, freedom of speech and its expression. Social media has broken and changed the transmission of information, relationships between people, democracy, journalism, truth.

The advance of artificial intelligence has been extremely fast and we have not kept up with it. European values ​​from equality to democracy and the rule of law will be tested with the development of artificial intelligence.

It is obvious that we have to prepare for the revolution accelerated by artificial intelligence, for example in working life, but also in our basic services. Our regulation is helplessly lagging behind, and we certainly don’t even yet understand all the future trends or challenges that artificial intelligence will throw at us.

One recent example emerges from Denmark, where the Danish social authority is using artificial intelligence to detect abuse of social benefits. The reports have revealed suspicions of, among other things, discrimination, ethnic profiling, privacy violations and mass surveillance.

The purpose of EU artificial intelligence regulation is to enable human-oriented and reliable artificial intelligence and at the same time ensure the protection of fundamental rights. If the suspicions about social scoring and human rights violations are true, this is not the case in Denmark. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg and only one example of the challenges we face with the increasing use of artificial intelligence.

In the fall, my Danish Green MEP colleague and I submitted a written question to the commission about the ethical use of artificial intelligence, so that we can tackle the matter in good time and specify the regulation as necessary.

Artificial intelligence is not, at least not yet, capable of independent ethical reflection. It is a human’s task to set limits for artificial intelligence and define the boundary conditions. That’s why we need regulation. Artificial intelligence cannot be a fog curtain for the systematic trampling of human rights.

Maria Ohisalo

MEP (Greens)