Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1463927
10 ANALYSIS 7.4.2022 AMID rising geopolitical tensions and intensifying polarisation, building a global consensus around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to be tough. Yet experts at a recent Sci- ence|Business Data Rules workshop were cautiously optimistic that the necessary political will exists. If they fail to achieve some form of coordination, all of the world's major powers will suffer, according to MEP Brando Benifei, one of the European Parliament's rapporteurs for the EU's AI Act, which could arrive on the stat- ute books next year. "I think it would be a problem, not just for Europe, but for all the players involved because ar- tificial intelligence will be a very per- vasive technology," he said. "Having two different contexts of application, standards and regulation will make it complicated to deal with all the activ- ities that now interconnect the world. So I think we need really to put an ef- fort into avoiding this situation." While contending that Europe is now leading the world in developing hori- zontal legislation for AI, Benifei said: "It's striking that China as in the last year, partly caught up in the race to regulate… In fact, China has recently had privacy and cyber-security legis- lation in place and is now also regulat- ing the use of algorithms. The United States, on the other hand, is apparent- ly more reluctant to regulate artificial intelligence seeing in Europe's choic- es, the intention to penalise American companies." He described such ma- noeuvrings "as a power struggle" with an uncertain outcome. The EU still needs to achieve an in- ternal consensus about the best way to regulate AI. Benifei said that the current draft of the AI Act may need to be amended following "reflections" on the distribution of responsibilities across the AI value chain, the gov- ernance structure and the criteria that determines whether an AI sys- tem is deemed high risk or low risk. He also expects Parliament to seek to strengthen the protection of de- mocracy and democratic processes, as well as extending the list of banned activities to encompass so-called so- cial scoring by private companies. Different geographies, different drivers While the EU is focused on ensuing AI can be trusted, Asian governments' primary objectives vary. Vidushi Mar- da, senior programme officer at ARTI- CLE 19, suggested that both India and Singapore are focused on encouraging innovation, while in China, most of the interest and momentum around AI regulation is through the lenses of cyber security, consumer protection, and national security, as opposed to considerations of individual rights and democracy. "So the guiding factor is, I think, a little bit different." (AR- TICLE 19 campaigns worldwide for freedom of expression). At the same time, Marda cautioned about making "overly simplistic" assumptions about Asian countries' motivations. Based in India, Marda flagged a big appetite for advanced technology in her home country. "Different states in India want to have a 360 degree view of citizens, the AI market in India is booming." Noting that many Asian countries don't yet have data pro- tection laws, Marda pointed out that there are very low barriers to entry for start-ups developing AI-based ap- plications for credit scoring, or smart city applications, such as predictive policing and facial recognition. How- ever, the Indian government is now looking to regulate data protection, even if the exceptions afforded to State actors are unnecessarily broad, Marda explained. "AI systems do fea- ture roughly in the proposed data protection bill," particularly in the sections focusing on biometric data, she added. Marda hopes that facial recognition, voice-based recognition and emotion recognition will be reg- ulated down the line, although that isn't on the government's agenda at the moment. Will the EU AI Act be a template for others? Although India is a member of the Global Partnership on AI (an inter- national effort to build a common approach, known as GPAI), Marda doesn't think India's policymakers will necessarily see the EU's AI Act as a blueprint. "I don't know if the tem- plate effect will happen" in a similar fashion to the GDPR, she said, where India takes the same legislation and change a few things. In this case, the priorities and the guiding principles are different. India is focused on safe- ty, security, and business incentives as opposed to a human rights-first ap- proach, Marda explained. The extent to which the EU Act does bring about some level of global har- monisation could vary by application. Whereas multinational companies are likely to ensure their web sites abide by the EU Act, regardless of where they are being accessed, they may not follow the legislation for other pro- cesses outside the EU, explained Alex Engler, a fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution. As the proposed EU Act would classify algo- rithmic hiring software, for example, as high-risk, such systems would have to comply with various transparency, technical and quality requirements. As a result, multinational companies may only make changes to their re- cruitment systems inside the EU, Eng- ler suggested. However, he pointed out there is a likely to be "a Brussels effect" on global AI platforms – foundational software that underpins AI systems. If the EU AI Act does ban social credit scoring "that probably will hit quite a few platforms, or at least services, that are doing data sharing," Engler noted. In general, he believes greater inter- national collaboration could lead to better rules and tools. "There's not as much investment as I'd like there to be in open source AI software for trans- parency for bias detection, for evalu- ating data sets," he added. Greater political will in the U.S. Although the U.S. government has become more actively involved in in- ternational efforts to build a consen- sus around AI under President Biden, it isn't attempting to create horizontal AI regulation akin to the EU's pro- posed AI Act. Moreover, the Biden administration has been slow to im- plement "an executive order [by the previous administration] that should have led to a broad systemic under- standing of how the US has the current Is global AI harmonisation actually achievable? Experts detect the emergence of a patchy international convergence around the use of artificial intelligence