In its Opinion revealed on 13 October 2022, the EDPS welcomes the opening of negotiations for a Council of Europe conference on synthetic intelligence, human rights, democracy and the rule of regulation (Conference). The EDPS considers the Conference as an necessary alternative to enhance the European Fee’s proposed Synthetic Intelligence Act by strengthening the safety of people’ elementary rights, such because the rights to privateness and to the safety of private knowledge.

Wojciech Wiewiórowski, EDPS, mentioned: “The Conference is a chance to develop the primary legally binding worldwide instrument on synthetic intelligence in keeping with EU requirements and values on human rights, democracy and the rule of regulation. To attain this, the Conference ought to embody acceptable, sturdy and clear safeguards to guard people who could also be affected by way of AI methods”.

To this finish, the EPDS makes the next key suggestions on the EU’s negotiating directives for the Conference.

The final goals ought to prioritise the safeguards and rights to be supplied to people, and teams of people, which may be impacted by way of AI methods. To make sure the safety of people and their rights, the negotiating directives ought to purpose for consistency of the Conference with the EU’s current authorized framework on knowledge safety.

The EDPS is of the opinion that AI methods that pose unacceptable dangers to people ought to be prohibited. Extra particularly, the usage of AI for: the social scoring of people; biometric identification of people in publically accessible areas; the categorisation of people  on the idea of their biometric knowledge (e.g. their ethnicity); the categorisation of people in keeping with their perceived feelings, ought to be prohibited by default. AI methods that have an effect on people’ rights to human dignity on the whole must also be prohibited. These situations must also be explicitly included within the negotiating directives.

Monitoring the usage of AI methods, how these methods work, the chance they entail, is essential. The EDPS recommends that the negotiating directives purpose at offering minimal procedural safeguards to guard people which may be affected by way of AI methods. These safeguards ought to be sure that the usage of AI methods is clear, will be clearly defined to oversight authorities and people, and will be audited recurrently to restrict dangers that such instruments might current. Compliance and management mechanisms must also be put in place, in addition to cross-border cooperation between competent authorities designed by the events to the Conference, to oversee the usage of AI, and shield people and their elementary rights.

Background data

The foundations for knowledge safety within the EU establishments, in addition to the duties of the European Information Safety Supervisor (EDPS), are set out in Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.

The EDPS is the impartial supervisory authority with duty for monitoring the processing of private knowledge by the EU establishments and our bodies, advising on insurance policies and laws that have an effect on privateness and cooperating with related authorities to make sure constant knowledge safety. Our mission can be to lift consciousness on dangers and shield individuals’s rights and freedoms when their private knowledge is processed.

Wojciech Wiewiórowski (EDPS), was appointed by a joint resolution of the European Parliament and the Council on to serve a five-year time period, starting on 6 December 2019.

The legislative session powers of the EDPS are laid down in Article 42 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, which obliges the European Fee to seek the advice of the EDPS on all legislative proposals and worldwide agreements that may have an effect on the processing of private knowledge. Such an obligation additionally applies to draft implementing and delegated acts. The statutory deadline for issuing an EDPS opinion is 8 weeks.

In regards to the Synthetic Intelligence Act: On 21 April 2021, the European Fee offered its Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down harmonised guidelines on synthetic intelligence. The EDPS and the European Information Safety Board (EDPB) issued a Joint Opinion on this Proposal, which will be discovered right here.