EU

“As AI development affects nearly every aspect of our lives and its influence will further increase in the foreseeable future, member states must take concrete steps to ensure that people’s human rights are safeguarded in the design, development and deployment of AI systems” says Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović in a report released yesterday.

‘Robotics is a source of economic growth in Europe, but at the same time it raises societal concerns’, says Anneli Roose of Robotics4EU, a Horizon 2020-project of the European Commission in this interview with Marco van der Hoeven at ERF 2022. Robotics4EU aims to discuss and adress these concerns, and bring stakeholders together. Among other things, they launched the commmunity Robospot.org  ‘Robots, and AI-powered robots, are the future, but we must talk about the socio-economic issues.’

Launched officially in January 2021 under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, Robotics4EU aims to take concrete steps to ensure a more widespread adoption of (AI-based) robots in the EU, particularly in the areas of Healthcare, Inspection and Maintenance of Infrastructure, Agri-Food, and Agile Production.

In its highly anticipated legislative proposal for AI, the European Commission today projected a clear message: fundamental rights and European values are at the core of Europe’s approach to AI. Europe is basically saying: when it comes to this technology, ‘anything goes’ is no longer the norm. We will not allow everything, just because it can be done. And we don’t just regulate bits and elements of the technology, we set EU wide rules that will resonate across the globe.