EU, US ready common code of conduct on artificial intelligence

Stockholm, May 31 (AFP/APP): The European Union and the United States said Wednesday that they would soon release a voluntary code of conduct on artificial intelligence, hoping to develop common standards among democracies as China makes rapid gains.

Both political and technology industry leaders have been warning of the growing risks as AI takes off, with potentially wide-ranging effects on privacy and other civil liberties.

After talks with EU officials in Sweden, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that Western partners felt the “fierce urgency” to act and would ask “like-minded countries” to join the voluntary code of conduct.

“There’s almost always a gap when new technologies emerge,” Blinken said, with “the time it takes for governments and institutions to figure out how to legislate or regulate”.

European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager added that a draft would be put forward “within weeks”.
“We think it’s really important that citizens can see that democracies can deliver,” she said.

She voiced hope “to do that in the broadest possible circle — with our friends in Canada, in the UK, in Japan, in India, bringing as many onboard as possible”.

Sam Altman, whose firm OpenAI created the popular ChatGPT bot, took part in the talks of the Trade and Technology Council between the EU and the United States, hosted this year in the northern Swedish city of Lulea.
The forum was set up in 2021 to try to ease trade frictions after the turbulent US presidency of Donald Trump but has since set its sights largely on artificial intelligence.

In a joint statement released by the White House and the European Commission, the two sides called AI a “transformative technology with great promise for our people, offering opportunities to increase prosperity and equity”.

“But in order to seize the opportunities it presents, we must mitigate its risks,” it said.
It added that experts from the two sides would work on “cooperation on AI standards and tools for trustworthy AI and risk management”.

They also discussed how to work together on sixth-generation mobile technology, an area in which Europeans have taken an early lead.