At the Paris AI Action Summit, all eyes must be on the European Union
As the Paris AI Action Summit starts on February 10, 2025, the EU’s exemplary record on regulating AI and data protection must be taken as an aspirational standard by India
Harsh Gour
Published on: 6 February 2025, 07:40 am
On February 2, 2025, the first set of rules under the Artificial Intelligence Act (‘AI Act’), which came into force on August 1, 2024, came into force. Some notable implications of these rules include a prohibition on the use of AI programmes that evaluate social behaviour, and a partial restriction on facial recognition in public spaces. With the AI Act, the European Union has set yet another example regarding how liberal democracies could be cognizant regarding their responsibility towards providing citizens certain implicit reservations of digital rights and their enforceability without demand. Previously, the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) had stood ground as a model in this regard, in a changing, highly connected world.
“Data is a new currency,” “Data is a new corporate raw material,” and “Data is the most valuable thing on earth” – these are no longer prognoses. Data is a new war. It is not unlikely that in the near future, political parties across electoral constituencies would pitch data protection as a crucial agenda within their manifestos. This will be guided by two core objectives - self-preservation, and the positioning of data protection as ‘national interest’, even as the latter will likely be guided by the standing of corporate lobbies on the issue.
The European Union's AI Act is a pioneering effort to regulate artificial intelligence, categorizing AI systems based on risk levels and setting a global precedent for ethical AI governance.
Until July 2017, when Alphabay, Thailand’s largest Dark Net marketplace, was busted for distributing fake licenses, cocaine, guns and similar prohibited goods, the country had not felt the need to intervene into personal data policy.
Cybercriminals often choose jurisdictions where it is hard to track them, and the governments in jurisdictions that lack a legal framework to intervene on personal data are often complicit. As for Thailand, officials claimed that they were uninformed about what was happening on Alphabay until they received communication from the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Naturally, the push for a global movement to legislate on the digital space would have to come from honest bureaucratic engagements which are, at least to some extent, divorced from private interests, and guided by a principled conscience. This uninfluenced, principled consensus is what should drive conversations and discussions around security and inclusivity at the upcoming AI Action Summit in Paris, scheduled to take place on February 10 and 11.
