It’s AI, so (no)thing to worry about…

By Bart Brouwers

In our Sunday newsletter, we, as editors, look back on the past seven days. We do this on the initiative of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He picks a subject, draws a picture, and we take it from there.

If there’s one thing keeping the minds busy, it’s the hope for / fear of artificial intelligence. Depending on the degree of your technical prowess, hope for a better future, your pessimistic disposition or your naiveté, there is always a reason to either embrace or severely reject AI, artificial intelligence. However that may be, precisely because the debate is so fierce, the EU obviously could not be left behind. Behold the birth of the AI Act, which our new Brussels correspondent Naomi O’Leary wrote about.

Naomi writes that the draft law proposed by the European Commission takes a risk-based approach. “It bans outright the kind of AIs that are deemed to carry “unacceptable risk”, such as the kind of social scoring system associated with the Chinese government. “High-risk” systems, like those used in transport, education, law enforcement, or recruitment, are obliged to reduce risk and build in human oversight. Systems with “minimal” or “limited” risk, such as chatbots, spam filters, or video games, have less stringent rules.”

Some civil society organizations have warned that the safeguards of this legislation are too weak. Clearly, EU governments do not want efforts to reduce the risks of artificial intelligence to rob them of the technology’s potential or halt innovation in an industry that many see as promising for economic growth.

Albert Jan Rasker, too, we learn from the cartoon, is well aware of that double charge that surrounds AI. Meanwhile, read Naomi’s debut for IO here:

A loose artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction

There was more

Of course, there was much more to enjoy at Innovation Origins last week. Check out the complete overview here, or click directly on one of the articles below: