Prepare your audits: EU Commission approves first-of-its-kind AI Act

The EU Council has given final approval to the bloc's landmark AI Act, setting the stage for enactment of a benchmark first-of-its-kind AI law across Europe.  The EC describes the AI Act as taking a "risk-based approach" to AI regulation, meaning that the greater the risk an AI product could harm society, the more regulations …

[Filippo]

I've just skimmed the act, but it seems to me like the tough bits only apply to AI systems that are used to make important decisions about people (law enforcement, employee evaluation, surveillance, etc), or that control safety-critical systems. I think there's something about big commercial providers. But free and open-source systems that are not high-risk are explicitly exempt from the whole regulation. That's actually more reasonable than I feared.

[LybsterRoy]

Now if only I could work out what the unintended consequences of this act would be. All I can say is that there will be some.

[Conundrum1885]

Turing Test

The risk here is that first you have to prove something is an AI.

What happens when a physics paper or some other publication is rejected because the reviewer(s) believe that it is

the work of an artificial intelligence when in fact it is not, and science then gets set back?

Or worse, a human researcher is wrongly accused of plagiarism, has their grant or other finance taken away and it later

emerges that they were innocent and the accusation was itself made by an AI stringing together the facts in a way that

logically makes sense but is still incorrect.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Turing Test

"

The risk here is that first you have to prove something is an AI."

Take the vendor's word for it. Having made a big fuss about their wonderful AI they'll be in no place to claim the legislation doesn't apply. Conversely the need to make the big fuss will ensure they do just that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Turing Test

It'd be a Voight-Kampff test, surely?

But you raise a good point- what if someone could disguise their work as the output of an AI? Could they gain some authority or leeway through this?

[Tron]

The next killer app...

...will be a state recognised region blocker that VPNs can't beat, for websites, apps, browser add-ons and applications. Not technically difficult. There are probably a few out there. Maybe mobos will get GPS chipsets for it. We have gone past the fun phase bit of tech development. Now we move into the state-controlled phase, where everything gets progressively crappier.

[Mainframe Greybeard]

Credit Scores?

> "Cognitive behavioural manipulation and social scoring will be banned from the EU because their risk is deemed unacceptable," the Commission said.

"social scoring" ... so Experian, Equifax, etc can't use AI methods to maintain your credit score?

You could argue that thats what they're already doing - they use an algorithm to determine your credit worthiness based on a huge amount of input data (your salary, credit cards usage, loans, payment history, etc) and mash it all down into a credit score number. I'd certainly consider that to be a "social score" as it ranks me individually against everyone else who's applying for any sort of credit and even affects what interest rates I could be offered.