In February 2020 the European Commission released 

“A White paper
on Artificial Intelligence — A European approach to excellence and
trust” aiming to give a definition of AI, underlining it’s benefits and
technological advances in different areas, including medicine, security,
farming, as well as identifying it’s potential risks: opaque decision
making, gender inequality, discrimination, lack of privacy. Based on
a European strategy for AI presented in April 2018, the current white
paper is a complex document analyzing strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities of Europe in the global market of Artificial Intelligence.

In 2018 33 zettabytes of data were produced and it’s expected to exceed

175 zettabytes in 2025. The rapid development of new technologies and
the increasing role of AI provokes a global competition and needs a
global approach, in which Europe has to identify its own role. The
European Commission emphasizes creating multidisciplinary
international cooperation practices between the private and public
sectors and academia. Furthermore, AI governance provokes debates
and should guarantee maximum multi-stakeholders and
multidisciplinarity in the European, national and international levels,
and partnership between academia and the private and public sectors.

The Guidelines of the High-Level Expert Group identified seven key

requirements: technical robustness and safety, human agency and
oversight, privacy and data governance, transparency, diversity, non-
discrimination and fairness, societal and environmental wellbeing,
accountability.
With this, EU embraces the responsibility to addressing risk in the use
and development of technologies, which must be developed according
to the European values: to promote peace, to offer freedom, security,
and justice, sustainable development, to combat discrimination, to
ensure scientific and technological progress, to respect the culture and
linguistic diversity.

Leadership in AI
Europe has an advantage for users and for technology development, a
strong academic sector, innovative startups, and multiple
manufacturing services in the fields of healthcare, finances,
agriculture. Europe is also a leader of AI algorithmic foundations. In
addition to this, a quarter of all industrial service robots are produced
in Europe. Nevertheless, Europe has a weak position in developing
applications for customers, as well as a lack of investment, skills, and
trust in AI, which is a significant disadvantage in the use of data assets.
The EU is a global leader in low-power electronics and neuromorphic
solution, but the market of AI processor is dominated by non-EU
players, European Processor Initiative can change this.

The objective of the EU now is to become an attractive, safe and

efficient data-agile economy, the global leader in AI. With this, the EU
wants to make sure the developing technologies will be beneficial for
the European citizens, “ improving their lives while respecting their
rights “.
Increasing investments in AI
Over the past three years, EU funding for AI research has increased by
70% compared to the previous period and achieved an amount of €1.5
billion. To compare and show the need of the EU to increase the funds
for AI research and development. In 2016 the EU invested in AI €3.2
billion, North America — around €12.1 billion in and Asia — €6.5
billion.

Europe holds a large amount of under-used public and industrial data

and has a secure digital system with low-power consumption. In order
to ensure global leadership, the EU supports the investment-oriented
approach. Europe needs to significantly increase its investments in this
sector and to do so, there is a need to invest in next-generation
technologies by mobilizing private and public funding.

In December 2018 the Commission presented a Coordinated Plan

aimed to force the AI progress development in Europe, proposing 70
joint actions in research, funding, market uptake, talent acquisition,
international and multidisciplinary cooperation. The plan is to be
adopted by the end of 2020. The objective of the European Union is to
attract over €20 billions of investment per year from the Digital
Europe Program, Horizon Europe as well as from the European
Structural and Investment Fund.

Human-centric technologies, privacy as a fundamental

human right.
The technologies have to be developed in compliance with EU rules,
protecting fundamental rights and consumers aimed to give citizens
confidence in AI systems, “ European AI is grounded in our values
and fundamental rights such as human dignity and privacy
protection”. With this, Europe wants to ensure the trust to tech by
citizens, saying that the trustworthiness necessary components in the
tech development, which is impossible without expandability of
opaque technologies, and from another perspective, considering poor
awareness of digital users.

Protection of Human Autonomy & Agency

While the European citizens are afraid of algorithmic decision-making
capacities, countries are struggling with the legal uncertainty. This
document states, that AI is a collection of technologies that combine
data, algorithms and computing power. All these three components
can be biased, and by following, can lead to the material and
immaterial harm and another unpredictable consequence. According
to the EU, a significant role to achieve sustainable development goals
(SDG), and ensure the democratic process and human rights. There
should be concrete actions to protect human agency and autonomy and
educate conscious digital citizens.

AI Ethics & research fragmentation

The complex nature of many new technologies results in cases where
AI can be used to protect fundamental human rights, but can also be
used for malicious purposes. As was mentioned above, international
cooperation on AI matters must be based on the respect of
fundamental rights, including human dignity, pluralism, inclusion,
nondiscrimination and protection of privacy and personal data.

The big issue with AI Ethics is a research fragmentation. The current

situation with a fragmented knowledge landscape is not acceptable
anymore, so it is critical to creating synergies between the multiple
European research centers for cooperation in research and will create
testing centers. The aim of an updated Digital Education Action Plan is
to reinforce tech skills.

EU position aims to promote the ethical use of AI. The ethical

guidelines were developed by the High-Level Expert Group. EU was
also closely involved in developing the OECD’s ethical principles for AI.
The G20 subsequently endorsed these principles in June 2019. EU
recognizes that important work on AI by UNESCO, the Council of
Europe, OECD, WTO, and ITU. At the UN, the EU is involved in the
follow-up of the report of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation
supporting regulatory convergence.

Legal Framework
The purpose of this white paper is to set out policy options and legal
frameworks, based on European fundamental values to become a
global leader in innovation in the data economy and its applications,
and to develop a benefic AI ecosystem for citizens, business and public
interest on both national and international levels. The Report, which
accompanies this white paper, analyses the relevant legal framework
and underlines its uncertainty. In 2019 over 350 companies have
tested this assessment list and sent feedback. A key result of the
feedback process is that requirements are already reflected in existing
legal or regulatory regimes, those regarding transparency, traceability,
and human oversight are not specifically covered under current
legislation.

The regulatory framework requires compliance with EU legislation,

principles, and values: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly,
human dignity, gender, race, ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability,
age or sexual orientation nondiscrimination, protection of personal
data and private life. The document says that AI needs to be considered
during the whole lifecycle, but machine learning, especially deep
learning, presents challenges involving explainability that
problematizes compliance with some policy goals. Europe has an
academic strength in quantum computing and quantum simulators,
and the document encouragis increase in the availability of testing and
experimentation facilities in this field.

In the white paper, it is clear that the EU legislative framework will

include legislation. Some specific features of AI (e.g. opacity,
complexity, unpredictability, and partially autonomous behavior) can
be hard to verify and make the enforcement of legislation more
difficult. As a result, in addition to the current legislation, new
legislation specific to AI is needed.
The EU commission underlines the importance of improving digital
literacy for all citizens and raising awareness of the issues related to
data privacy, transparency, the definition of AI, data governance,
responsibility, and trust and dual-use of technologies. The European
Commission invited citizens to send comments and possible
suggestions regarding this white paper.