EU High-Level Expert Group presents ethics guidelines for AI

The High-level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) – established by the European Commission in 2018 – presented a set of Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. The guidelines outline key ethical principles that should guide the development and use of AI, and provide guidance on how such principles can be operationalised in socio-technical systems. In the group’s view, trustworthy AI should respect three key principles: (a) be lawful (by respecting all applicable laws and regulations), (b) be ethical (by respecting ethical principles and values), and (c) be robust (from a technical perspective, but also taking into account the social environment). Building on these principles, the guidelines also emphasise seven requirements that trustworthy AI systems should meet: human agency and oversight; technical robustness and safety; privacy and data governance; transparency; diversity, non-discrimination and fairness; societal and environmental well-being, and accountability. As a next step, the Commission intends to set up a pilot process to gather feedback to improve the assessment list that operationalised the aforementioned requirements.