EU Banning AI That Infringes Civil Liberties. US, Not So Much
The European Parliament, the lawmaking wing of the European Union, proposed an Artificial Intelligence Act on December 8 to make sure AI “respects fundamental rights and democracy.”
While US President Joe Biden issued an executive order about the development and use of AI in the United States on October 30, the measure isn’t as sweeping. It’s meant, instead, “to coordinate the use of AI across the Federal Government.” It mainly concerns national security.
Across the world, it is expected that 2024 will be the year for AI legislation. Governments are interested in restricting AI in order to regulate the ways in which online companies use the data that runs artificial intelligence. In essence, AI is fed large groups of public or purchased data then programmed to produce results based on the information received. There are various ways this data can be misused by the people who program artificial intelligence.
The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts policy research, gives examples of how each of the proposed prohibitions is currently in use in Europe and the United States.
Facial Recognition
Facial recognition uses biometric categorization systems based on external demographics, like race, facial features and expressions to tag people with surveillance cameras. It can pair a person with a religious group or political belief to enhance the procedure. The Brookings Institution research says Clearview AI, PimEyes and Amazon Rekognition all use facial recognition.
The EU act restricts “remote facial recognition and biometric identification. EU Data Protection Authorities have fined facial recognition companies under GDPR,” says Brookings.The European Parliament states there are “narrow exceptions for the use of biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement purposes, subject to prior judicial authorisation and for strictly defined lists of crime.” Brookings says that in the US, the government agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology, has its own AI face recognition test program that “contributes efficacy and fairness information to the market for facial recognition software.” The technology is not restricted by public or private use in the US and face recognition cameras are sold on Amazon.com.
The EU also is prohibiting the “scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases” and “emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions.” These issues haven’t yet been touched upon in the United States.
Social Scoring and Socioeconomic Decisions
Social scoring is what governments and businesses use to make service eligibility decisions based on a person’s “social behaviour or personal characteristics,” according to the EU, which is banning the practice for governments. It is still considering prohibiting commercial social scoring.
Government social scoring can affect the receipt of services from state-funded schools, universities, hospitals and social service programs. The most noteworthy form of commercial social scoring is using social media for background checks while hiring and in the workplace itself to monitor employee suitability. Brookings gives another example of commercial social scoring as using “the analysis of customer’s social media posts, food delivery orders, or online reviews in order to make decisions about eligibility for business services, such as product returns.”
Brookings says that in the US, the non-actionable “AI Bill of Rights and associated Federal Agency Actions have created patchwork oversight for some of these applications” used for “hiring, educational access, and financial services approval.”
Human Manipulation
The European Parliament also seeks to prohibit the use of AI to “manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will.” This can be done with social media recommender and moderation systems to show specific content to set audiences. Brookings says this includes “newsfeeds and group recommendations on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.”
The EU is also banning “AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation).”
Amnesty International reported last month on how TikTok, in particular, seems to push suicidal content to vulnerable youth. The US government has sought to ban TikTok as a national security threat from China. However, all social media platforms utilize user data in a similar manner.
AI in Medical and Other Devices
According to Brookings, the “EU AI Act considers AI implemented within products that are already regulated under EU law to be high risk and further would have new AI standards incorporated into current regulatory process.” This is referring to the use of AI in “medical devices, partially automous [sic] cars and planes.” There are some laws in place in the United States for these categories.
There are various other AI formats that the EU is seeking to prohibit for conflicting with civil liberties. These include the non-declaration of AI in commercial chatbots, which is allowed in the US. The use of commercial search algorithms to suggest products to consumers that are preferred instead by websites like Amazon and Shopify. This is also permitted in the US. Targeting advertising by demographics and social profiling is another AI category that’s being banned in the EU. Brooking notes that “individual federal agency lawsuits have slightly curtailed some targeted advertising” in the US.
The European Parliament insists, “Non-compliance with the rules can lead to fines ranging from 35 million euro or 7% of global turnover to 7.5 million or 1.5 % of turnover, depending on the infringement and size of the company.”
It says “The agreed text will now have to be formally adopted by both Parliament and Council to become EU law. Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees will vote on the agreement in a forthcoming meeting.”
IP Correspondent