"EU: AI Act must ban dangerous, AI-powered technologies in historic law"

The European Union (EU) must ban dangerous, AI-powered technologies in the AI Act, Amnesty International said today, as the bloc aims to finalize the world’s first comprehensive AI rulebook this fall.  

Numerous states across the globe have deployed unregulated AI systems to assess welfare claims, monitor public spaces, or determine someone’s likelihood of committing a crime. These technologies are often branded as ‘technical fixes’ for structural issues such as poverty, sexism and discrimination. They use sensitive and often staggering amounts of data, which are fed into automated systems to decide whether or not individuals should receive housing, benefits, healthcare and education — or even be charged with a crime. [...]

Yet instead of fixing societal problems, many AI systems have flagrantly amplified racism and inequalities, and perpetuated human rights harms and discrimination.  

“These systems are not used to improve people’s access to welfare, they are used to cut costs. And when you already have systemic racism and discrimination, these technologies amplify harms against marginalized communities at much greater scale and speed,” said Mher Hakobyan, Amnesty International’s Advocacy Advisor on AI Regulation. 

“Instead of focusing disproportionally on the ‘existential threats’ posed by AI, EU lawmakers should formulate laws that address existing problems, such as the fact that these technologies are used for making grossly discriminatory decisions that undermine access to basic human rights.” [...]

“Besides ensuring a full ban of facial recognition within the EU, lawmakers must ensure that this and other highly problematic technologies banned within the EU are not manufactured in the bloc, only to be exported to countries where they are used to commit serious human rights violations. EU and Member States have obligations under international law to ensure that companies within their jurisdictions do not profit from human rights abuses by exporting technologies used for mass surveillance and racist policing,” said Mher Hakobyan.

AI technology facilitates abuse of migrants 

EU member states have increasingly resorted to using opaque and hostile technologies to facilitate abuses of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers at their borders.    

Lawmakers must ban racist profiling and risk assessment systems, which label migrants and asylum seekers as ‘threats’, as well as forecasting technologies, which are used to predict border movements and deny people the right to asylum. [...]