The international pause button is artificial intelligence in the making

“This is a framework agreement that prioritizes the protection of fundamental values, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Instead we want to block the progress of technological innovation,” Patrick Penninckx said on Thursday. To the Digital Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. Fleming is Head of the Information Society Department of the Council of Europe. All countries in Europe are members of this organization.

The agreement does not specify exactly when countries can apply the brakes, but “basically it is about respecting human rights law, protecting democracy and the rule of law obligations”.

Negotiations on an AI contract

The Council of Europe is negotiating an AI treaty with the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan and Israel. It does not contain rules for every possible use of artificial intelligence, such as Metaverse, SatGBT, Deepfake, and facial recognition. “It is impossible for an international organization to cover all possible uses of artificial intelligence in a general agreement,” Pennincks said. “We have set up a system that will mark future developments. We need to ensure that human rights are at the fore, and guidelines from democracies must be followed by institutions.”

Artificial intelligence creates computer systems that come close to human intelligence. For example, they may write texts that appear to be written by a human. This technology is also used in self-driving cars, which must calculate every millisecond where they are driving, what the environment is like, where danger is and how to respond to it.

Calling from the world of technology

Earlier this week, around 1,400 people from the tech world called for a pause in artificial intelligence development. They believe there are very few ‘guard rails’ when AI systems disrupt society. The call was signed by prominent entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk (Tesla), Steve Wozniak (Apple), John Thalin (Skype) and Evan Sharp (Pinterest). AI-based scientists like Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell also support this call. The letter also includes Jeroen Frans, who works on artificial intelligence at ABN Amro in the Netherlands, Antoon Neuge of chip machine manufacturer ASML, Simon Friederich of the University of Groningen, and Jeroen van den Hoeven, professor of ethics and technology. at TU Delft.