Council of Europe and Artificial Intelligence
Conference on Current and Future Challenges of Coordinated Policies on AI Regulation
Budapest, 26 October 2021 (online)
Co-organised by the Hungarian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers and the Council of Europe
Council of Europe and AI
Artificial intelligence and human rights
Artificial Intelligence raises important and urgent issues. AI is already with us – changing the information that we receive, the choices that we make, and the ways in which our societies function. In the coming years AI will play an even greater role in the way that governments and public institutions operate, and the way in which citizens interact and participate in the democratic process.
It is clear that AI presents both benefits and risks. We need to ensure that AI promotes and protects our standards. I look forward to the outcome of the work of the Ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI), mandated by the Committee of Ministers to “examine the feasibility and potential elements on the basis of broad multi-stakeholder consultations, of a legal framework for the development, design and application of artificial intelligence, based on the Council of Europe’s standards on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.” [Full statement]
Marija Pejčinović Burić
Secretary General of the Council of Europe
How to regulate the development of artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) will have an impact on our societies that we hardly imagine. Algorithms are already said to be able to identify the best candidates for a job, assist doctors to establish medical diagnoses or help lawyers before the courts. All this is not entirely new, since already in the 1980s, expert systems assisted humans with a high level of expertise. What is new today is that computers are increasingly able to perform extremely complex tasks independently, but their designers sometimes no longer understand how, what has happened in the "black box" of deep learning.
Therefore, we clearly need regulation to leave essential decision-making to humans and not to mathematical models, whose adequacy and biases are not controlled. [Full statement - Speeches and articles]
Jan Kleijssen
Director, Information Society - Action against Crime
www.coe.int/ai
Towards an application of AI based on human rights, the rule of law and democracy
www.coe.int/cahai
Ad hoc Committee CAHAI
