Even the Pandemic Doesn’t Stop Europe’s Push to Regulate AI
The strictest rules will apply to life-and-death applications like self-driving cars and remote surgery.
When DeepMind, the artificial intelligence company owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., released its predictions about some of the building blocks of the virus that causes Covid-19 in early March, it gave medical researchers a small but potentially important clue that could help them develop a vaccine and treatments for the respiratory illness. The company’s deep learning system, AlphaFold, which predicts the shapes of proteins when no similar structures are available, is just one example of the powerful role AI is playing in the fight against the novel coronavirus.
The innovations that DeepMind and others are rapidly rolling out could be complicated by AI laws to be unveiled by the European Union this year. Even as the coronavirus upends business, economic, and legislative plans the world over, the EU is pushing ahead with its AI policy proposal, which would make it a global leader in regulating the sector. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, released its plan in February, calling for public feedback by the end of May. Unless prolonged virus-related disruptions get in the way, a formal proposal is expected by yearend.