The European Parliament started new legislative initiatives in the field of Artificial Intelligence and electronic platforms

In October 2020 the European Parliament initiated several legislative procedures in the field of technology by giving recommendations to the European Commission for the creation of legislative acts in the field of artificial intelligence and electronic platforms for digital content sharing. These recommendations will probably become the basis of future legislative acts – regulations or directives.
With regard to artificial intelligence the recommendations are in three general directions. Firstly, an accent is placed on the requirement for subjecting the development and use of artificial intelligence to strict ethical rules, including bans on discrimination and prejudice, transparency and accountability, social and ecological responsibility, personal data protection, etc. Within the scope of this requirement it will be mandatory for high-risk technology which includes artificial intelligence to be directly controllable by humans – and that decision-taking by the artificial intelligence can be stopped when a risk for serious conflict with ethical principals or actual harm arises. The second direction is the requirement for creation of clear rules which persons are liable for the actions of artificial intelligence, respectively to create an opportunity to insure them, similar to automotive liability insurance. The third directions is aimed at guaranteeing the rights over intellectual property – for the purpose of protecting innovation, whereas a distinction is drawn between objects, created with the aid of artificial intelligence and objects created solely by artificial intelligence. For the moment it is considered that artificial intelligence should not be recognized as a legal person.
With regard to electronic platforms the problems are several – on one hand, with the proposed legislative acts to be adopted by the Commission, it is suggested to adopt more efficacious measures against illegal content, while drawing a distinction from harmful content. At the same time a ban over the preliminary filters for establishing whether content is legal is also being discussed – since this matter must be reviewed by a court. In the same line, more efficacious measures are required for guaranteeing the fundamental rights of expression on the Internet, respectively to prevent the unjustified removal of content, which might harm the freedom of speech. The initiatives require also the adoption of measures for better consumer protection with regard to goods and services by introducing guarantees against misleading commercial practices, especially when it comes to medicine and medical appliances. On the other hand, the initiatives contain a proposal to limit the use of algorithms for content curation and measures to target advertisement at certain groups, including allowing users to completely refuse the application of such algorithms for platform-suggested content.