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Council of Europe and AI Council of Europe and AI

Artificial intelligence and human rights

Thorbjørn Jagland Secretary General of the Council of EuropeArtificial intelligence (AI) will revolutionise the way we live. In fields such as medicine, communications and transport new opportunities abound. But the consequences of AI’s advance for democracy, human rights and the rule of law are still unclear. As the late Stephen Hawking warned, the risks of unregulated AI are unprecedented. I have therefore set up a taskforce, drawn from across the Council of Europe,to assess both the threats and opportunities of AI for human rights. This website will enable you to follow our work and participate.

Thorbjørn Jagland
Secretary General of the Council of Europe

@TJagland

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. [...]

Jan Kleijssen
Director, Information Society - Action against Crime

@JKleijssen

www.coe.int/ai

Towards an ethical and responsible AI
for human rights, rule of law
and democracy

Follow: #CoE4AI

         

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Governing the Game Changer – Impacts of artificial intelligence development on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law

Conference co-organised by the Finnish Presidency of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers and the Council of Europe in Helsinki (Finland), 26-27 February 2019

Organised around the three main pillars that constitute the Council of Europe core values, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, panel discussions addressed the challenges and opportunities of AI development for individuals, for societies, and for the viability of our legal and institutional frameworks, and explored options for ensuring that effective mechanisms of democratic oversight are in place.

Conclusions: English | Deutsch | Italiano

Conference page: Speeches and presentations | Video recordings | Press coverage and more

Work in progress Work in progress

Committee of Ministers

The Committee of Ministers replies to the Recommendation n°2102(2017) of the Parliamentary Assembly about Technological convergence, artificial intelligence and human rights (Doc. 14432).

The Committee of Ministers adopted a Declaration Decl(13/02/2019)1 on the manipulative capabilities of algorithmic processes.

Parliamentary Assembly

The Parliamentary Assembly published a Recommendation n°2102(2017) about Technological convergence, artificial intelligence and human rights.

A group of parlimentarians proposes a motion for a recommendation about Justice by algorithm (the role of artificial intelligence in policing and criminal justice systems)

The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights decided to create a new Sub-Committee on artificial intelligence and human rights in 2019.

Commissioner for Human Rights

A comment was published in July 2018 to present the views of the Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights issues at stake in AI development and use.

Speech by the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Helsinki High Level Conference "AI: governing the game changer" (26 February 2019)

Work by sector

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Interview with Jan Kleijssen, Director of the Information Society and Action against Crime Directorate, on the human rights and artificial intelligence

Interview with Ambassador Corina CĂLUGĂRU, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Moldova to the Council of Europe, and Thematic Co-ordinator on Information Policy (TC-INF)

AI, the game changer: Presentation of the high-level conference in Helsinki
(26-27 Feb. 2019)

Interview with Ambassador Satu Mattila-Budich, Permanent Representative of Finland to the Council of Europe

Conclusions of the high level conference of Helsinki by Patrick Penninckx, Head of the Information Society Department at the Council of Europe, and Eeva Aittoniemi, Ministerial Counsellor at the Ministry of Justice of Finland (EU Coordination and International Affairs)

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