The European Parliament has voted in favor of a law that essentially calls for a ban on biometric mass surveillance technologies powered by artificial intelligence, such as facial recognition systems.
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A big "no" to mass surveillance
MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) are concerned about the discrimination, prejudice and injustice that arise from AI-based predictive policing, and their concerns are based on many real-world examples. For the record, 377 MEPs voted in favor, 248 against and 62 were absent.
Vendors of AI-based facial recognition solutions have admitted that algorithmic bias has plagued their systems for years and have made efforts to address the problem through different datasets and machine learning optimizations. However, the discrimination rates are still too high to be acceptable in any significant deployment context.
With today's decision, the European Parliament calls for a permanent ban on the automatic identification of individuals in public spaces and a ban on predictive policing based on behavioural data.
The only exception to the ban is in cases of criminal suspects, but even then, the use of facial recognition databases should be excluded from the available tools used to exonerate or prove that person's guilt. Clearview AI is specifically cited as an example of what should be avoided.
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Finally, MEPs call for higher levels of transparency, such as the use of open source for detection algorithms, allowing public scrutiny of all aspects of these systems.
Petar Vitanov, lead MEP on the issue, said the following:
Fundamental rights must be a given. For the first time, we are asking for a temporary suspension of a law, as technology has proven ineffective and often leads to discrimination.
We are clearly opposed to predictive policing based on the use of artificial intelligence as well as any processing of biometric data that leads to mass surveillance. This is a huge victory for all European citizens.
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Although this is a significant development and a strong step towards the protection of human rights in Europe, the case with the development of artificial intelligence is not closed.
The “Artificial Intelligence Law” is still being negotiated and drafted, so the European Parliament’s decision is simply a catalyst at this point. MEPs are sending a message about what will be acceptable and where they would like more safeguards to be introduced.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
