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4 INTERVIEW 1.12.2022 PAUL COCKS ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) technol- ogies are increasingly prevalent in our lives—from digital voice assistants to personalised advertising and entertain- ment or advanced medical diagnostics. What is the EU doing to ensure every- one benefits? I believe the EU has positioned it- self as the most forward-looking, advanced, and ambitious hub for AI technologies in the globe, as it has shown recently as it embarked on be- coming the first major regulator any- where in the world, to have a compre- hensive and robust AI regulation that legislates on the AI systems which we already find all around us. The leg- islative proposal however is not an isolated initiative, since the EU Com- mission had already published its AI package in 2021, which included its plan to foster a European approach to AI, a review to the Coordinated Plan on AI (initially published in 2018) and the regulation proposal which I've already mentioned. This, natural- ly, is in conjunction with the massive financial investment made by EU in- stitutions in developing AI across the continent. In real terms, what has the EU invested in AI? If we want to take a look at the past, results show that prior to COVID-19 (in 2019), the EU invested between €7.9 and €9 billion in AI. Was this enough? Definitely not, and the Euro- pean Investment Bank was very clear that there was a shortfall of up to €10 billion in investments that was hold- ing Europe back when compared to other markets like the USA and Chi- na. Going forward however, through the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes, the Commission plans to invest almost €1 billion per year in AI. Apart from its direct investments, it will help the private sector as well as individual member states mobilise additional funds to reach an annual investment volume of €20 billion over the course of what we're calling the digital decade. As AI proliferates across a broad range of markets, sectors, and country contexts, so too will AI's benefits, but also misuse and AI-related harms. How is the EU going to protect people – especially those most at risk – from being negatively impacted by the use of AI? The EU needs a progressive, en- forceable legal framework on AI fo- cusing on promoting trustworthy, human-centric AI systems that up- hold fundamental rights and protect people, especially those most at risk. In this context, the AI Act proposed by the European Commission and dis- cussed during the S&D AI action day clearly and once again gives the EU the role of global standard-setter and pro- vides the means to define the kind of AI we want in Europe. Once adopted, the new rules will regulate AI systems and identify the risk categories of AI applications, especially unacceptable or high-risk applications. Unacceptable risks are those appli- cations of AI which resemble the gov- ernment-run social scoring processes currently happening in the People's Republic of China. The EU plans to ban these practices and as a politi- cal group, the S&D wholeheartedly agrees, however we want to take this a step further. The current EU propos- al only seeks to ban social scoring if is done by the Government, the S&D Group is asking the EU Commission to ban the use of social scoring by private entities as well in its updated proposal. We all know that global tech giants wield as much power as some Governments, and it would only be fair to widen the scope of the regula- tions to make sure they are covered in e Socialists and Democrats group within the European Parliament is organising an Artificial Intelligence Action Day today. e purpose of the event is to exchange with civil society, academia and other stakeholders on four different priorities of the S&D group. e event will comprise four workshops, carried out at the same time in Malta, Italy, Denmark and Spain. BusinessToday spoke to Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba about the importance and benefits of AI as well as the need to safeguard users from any harm or exploitation Promoting AI while

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