Ahead of the AI Act vote in the European Parliament, civil society calls on Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to ensure the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) prioritises fundamental rights and protects people affected by artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Increasingly we see the deployment of AI systems to monitor and identify us in public spaces, predict our likelihood of criminality, re-direct policing and immigration control to already over-surveilled areas, facilitate violations of the right to claim asylum and the presumption of innocence, predict our emotions and categorise us using discriminatory inferences, and to make crucial decisions about us that determine our access to welfare, education and employment.
Without proper regulation, AI systems will exacerbate existing societal harms of mass surveillance, structural discrimination, centralised power of large technology companies, the unaccountable public decision-making and environmental extraction. The complexity, lack of accountability and public transparency, and few available processes for redress present challenges for people to enforce their rights when harmed by AI systems. In particular, these barriers present a particular risk for the most marginalised in society.
The EU’s AI Act can, and should, address these issues, ensuring that AI development and use operates within a framework of accountability, transparency and appropriate, fundamental-rights based limitations. We are calling for MEPs to ensure the following in the AI Act vote:
Empower people affected by AI systems
- Ensure horizontal and mainstreamed accessibility requirements for all AI systems;
- Ensure people affected by AI systems are notified and have the right to seek information when affected by AI-assisted decisions and outcomes;
- Include a right for people affected to lodge a complaint with a national authority, if their rights have been violated by the use of an AI system;
- Include a right to representation of natural persons and the right for public interest organisations to lodge standalone complaints with a national supervisory authority;
- Include rights to effective remedies for the infringement of rights.
Ensure accountability and transparency for the use of AI
- Include an obligation on users to conduct and publish a fundamental rights impact assessment before each deployment of a high-risk AI system and meaningfully engage civil society and affected people in this process
- Require all users of high-risk AI systems, and users of all systems in the public sphere, to register the use in the European AI database before deployment;
- Ensure that the classification process for high-risk AI systems prioritises legal certainty and provides no loophole for providers to circumvent legal scrutiny;
- Ensure that EU-based AI providers whose systems impact people outside of the EU are subject to the same requirements as those inside the EU.
Prohibit AI systems that pose an unacceptable risk for fundamental rights
- A full ban on real-time and post remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces, by all actors, without exception;
- A prohibition of all forms of predictive and profiling systems in law enforcement and criminal justice (location / place-based and person-based);
- Prohibitions on AI in migration contexts to make individual risk assessments and profiles based on personal and sensitive data, and predictive analytic systems when used to interdict, curtail and prevent migration;
- A prohibition on biometric categorisation systems that categorise natural persons according to sensitive or protected attributes as well as the use of any biometric categorisation and automated behavioural detection systems in publicly accessible spaces;
- A ban on the use of emotion recognition systems to infer people’s emotions and mental states from physical, physiological, behavioural, as well as biometric dat
We call on MEPs to vote to include these protections in the AI act and ensure the Regulation is a vehicle for the promotion of fundamental rights and social justice.
For a detailed outline of how the AI Act can better protect fundamental rights, see this statement signed by 123 civil society organisations. More information on amendments proposed by civil society can be found here.
Signed,
- European Digital Rights (EDRi)
- Access Now
- Algorithm Watch
- Amnesty International
- Article 19
- Bits of Freedom
- Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN)
- European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL)
- European Disability Forum
- Fair Trials
- Homo Digitalis
- Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL)
- Panoptykon Foundation
- Platform for International Cooperation on the Rights of Undocumented Migrants (PICUM)
- #jesuislà
- Afrique Culture Maroc
- AI Forensics
- AI Now Institute
- Alternatif Bilisim (AiA)
- Alliance4Europe
- Are You Syrious?
- Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI)
- autonomic
- Avaaz Foundation
- Baobab Experience
- Border Violence Monitoring Network
- Centre for Youths Integrated Development
- Civil Liberties Union for Europe
- Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ)
- Coalizione Italiana Libertà e Diritti civili
- Comisión General Justicia y Paz
- DataEthics.eu
- Defend Democracy
- Deutsche Vereinigung für Datenschutz e.V. (DVD)
- Digitalcourage
- Digitale Gesellschaft, Switzerland
- Državljan D / Citizen D
- Each One Teach One (EOTO) e. V.
- Ekō
- Equipo Decenio Afrodescendiente España
- Eumans
- European Civic Forum
- European Network Against Racism (ENAR)
- European Sex Workers Rights Alliance
- Fair Trials
- Fair Vote UK
- Faith Matters EU
- FUNDACIÓN SECRETARIADO GITANO
- Gong
- Greek Forum of Migrants
- Health Action International
- Hermes Center
- horizontl Collaborative
- IT-Pol Denmark
- Ivorian Community of Greece
- La Strada International
- Lafede.cat
- Lie Detectors
- Ligue des droits humains
- Migrants’ Rights Network
- Mujeres Supervivientes
- Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
- ORBITvzw
- Privacy International
- Queerstion Media
- Racism and Technology Center
- Refugee Law Lab, York University
- Refugees in danger (NGO) – Denmark
- save space e.V.
- SOS RACISMO GIPUZKOA
- Stichting The London Story
- Superbloom (previously Simply Secure)
- The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
- UNI Europa
Drafted by: European Digital Rights, Access Now, Algorithm Watch, Amnesty International, Article 19, Bits of Freedom, Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN), European Center for Not-for-Profit Law, (ECNL), European Disability Forum, Fair Trials, Homo Digitalis, Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), Panoptykon Foundation, Platform for International Cooperation on the Rights of Undocumented Migrants (PICUM).