Artificial intelligence technologies will bring about both advances and changes to our economy and daily lives. Member States and European institutions have aligned to boost the EU’s technology and industrial capacity. We must therefore provide European industries with clear direction toward a quick integration of AI to bolster their competitiveness.
At the same time, it is our duty to look at this future with critical eyes and focus on a common objective to strengthen our social fabric.
Deployments of AI must respect timeless values based on the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and democratic principles shared by all Member States.
Ethical AI should be based on common principles such as fairness, reliability, safety, privacy, security, and inclusiveness, and underscored through transparency and accountability.
One pressing question is how the use of biometric technologies such as facial recognition will impact our society. This technology brings important and even exciting societal benefits, but also the potential for abuse. The facial recognition genie, so to speak, is barely emerging from the bottle. Unless we act, we risk waking up five years from now to find that facial recognition services have spread in ways that exacerbate societal issues such as discrimination. By that time, these challenges may become more difficult to bottle back up. It is time to work on new regulations for these technologies. As Mark Twain once noted, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” The time to start is now.
More on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics:
- Artificial Intelligence: realizing the potential and tackling the challenges
- The Future Computed: Artificial Intelligence and its role in society
- AI: The quest for the moral machine
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