Universal Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence Announced in Brussels

The Universal Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence, the first human rights framework for AI, were announced today at the data protection commissioners conference in Brussels. Among the conference speakers are privacy commissioners,  technologists, human rights advocates, and industry leaders.

Marc Rotenberg (@MarcRotenberg), the President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), said “This is a landmark policy framework for Artificial Intelligence. The Universal Guidelines set out a comprehensive approach to protect the rights of the individual.”

More than 150 experts and 40 NGOs, representing 30 countries around the world endorsed the UGAI.  Among the signatories are the American Association for the Advancement of Science,  the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society,  BEUC (the European Consumer Organization), and human rights advocate and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

The Universal Guidelines build on the work of scientific societies, including the ACM, the EUACM, and the IEEE, human rights organizations, and leading experts in the field.

The Universal Guidelines include several well-established principles for AI governance, and puts forward new principles for the management of AI systems. The Universal Guidelines for AI include rights to transparency and human determination; obligations of identification, fairness, accountability, validity, quality, public safety, cybersecurity, and termination; and prohibitions on secret profiling and unitary scoring.

European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli today endorsed the Universal Guidelines at the Public Voice conference in Brussels.

Mr. Rotenberg remarked, “The Universal Guidelines on Artificial Intelligence set out concrete recommendations. Our goal is to promote transparency and accountability for these systems. We hope they will be incorporated into ethical standards, adopted in national law and international agreements, and built into the design of systems.”

 

References:

Universal Guidelines for AI (UGAI)

https://thepublicvoice.org/AI-universal-guidelines/

Universal Guidelines for AI (UGAI) – Endorsements (as of 22 October)

https://thepublicvoice.org/AI-universal-guidelines/endorsement/

Universal Guidelines for AI (UGAI) – Explanatory Memo and References

https://thepublicvoice.org/ai-universal-guidelines/memo/

The Public Voice: AI, Ethics, and Fundamental Rights

Brussels, 23 October 2018

https://thepublicvoice.org/events/brussels18/

Debating Ethics: Dignity and Respect in Data Driven Life

40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

Brussels, 23-25 October 2018

https://privacyconference2018.org/en