Key policy objectives

In order to nurture AI excellence into the market, the updated 2021 Coordinated Plan outlines important steps to drive investments in AI and to align AI policies throughout the European Union and its Member States.
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They plan to achieve this through 4 key policy objectives:

• Set enabling conditions for AI's development and uptake
  ‍‍To build economies of scale models that support synergies across the EU, a framework of efficient governance and coordination is required. Additionally, large volumes of high quality and secure data are needed that must be stored in an infrastructure able to analyse and process this data.
  
• Build strategic leadership in high-impact sectors
  ‍‍7 sectoral areas have been identified where the EU can build strategic leadership: environment, health, robotics, public sector, home affairs, transport and agriculture. Within each sectoral area, a set of joint actions have been proposed to achieve these objectives.
  
• Make the EU the right place for AI to thrive
  ‍To facilitate an ecosystem of AI excellence in the EU, the commission sets out to facilitate world-class foundational and application-oriented research; development, deployment and uptake of AI; and measures to fund and scale innovative ideas and solutions for AI.
  
• Ensure AI technologies work for people
  ‍As AI technologies aim to improve many aspects of human life, plans and regulations must be in place that best suits all citizens. To achieve this, the Commission aims to ensure that European AI is human-centric, sustainable, secure, inclusive and trustworthy.
  

The EU’s risk-based approach: an outline

Despite the overwhelming benefits of AI technology and its anticipated impact on our global society, there are certain associated risks regarding fundamental rights and user safety, which could lead to negative implications if not unchecked. This may potentially result in certain legal uncertainties for companies that could significantly impede the widespread adoption of AI technologies by businesses and citizens due to a lack of trust. Autonomous regulatory oversight by individual EU nations would jeopardise the synergistic ecosystem of the internal market.
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To address these issues, the Commission aims to build the first-ever legal framework for AI systems which outlines the various levels of risks. The Commission states that "...new rules will be applied directly in the same way across all Member States based on a future-proof definition of AI."

Unacceptable risk

This category includes anything considered a clear threat to EU citizens to be banned: from social scoring by governments to toys using voice assistance that encourages dangerous behaviour of children.

High risk

Note: This risk category has been provided with a lot more detail by the EC.

• Critical infrastructures (e.g. transport), that could put the life and health of citizens at risk
• Educational or vocational training, that may determine the access to education and professional course of someone’s life (e.g. scoring of exams)
• Safety components of products (e.g. AI application in robot-assisted surgery)
• Employment, workers management and access to self-employment (e.g. CV sorting software for recruitment procedures)
• Essential private and public services (e.g. credit scoring denying citizens the opportunity to obtain a loan)
• Law enforcement that may interfere with people’s fundamental rights (e.g. evaluation of the reliability of evidence)
• Migration, asylum and border control management (e.g. verification of authenticity of travel documents)
• Administration of justice and democratic processes (e.g. applying the law to a concrete set of facts)

Limited risk

AI systems such as chatbots are subject to minimal transparency obligations, intended to allow those interacting with the content to make informed decisions. The user can then decide to continue or step back from using the application.

Minimal risk

Free use of applications such as AI-enabled video games or spam filters. The vast majority of AI systems fall into this category where the new rules do not intervene as these systems represent only minimal or no risk for citizen’s rights or safety.