The Standing Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, meeting yesterday 22 and 23 October by videoconference and enlarged to include all its members, adopted five reports on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on democracy, human rights and the Rule of law.
Overall, this question has been broken down into specific themes - AI and the worlds of work, health and criminal justice - to which must be added the question of autonomous vehicles and the more synthetic question of democratic governance of AI.
Like the other four reports, the latter was accompanied by a Resolution addressed to the governments of the 47 member states and a Recommendation to the Committee of Ministers, the Council of Europe’s executive body bringing together the representatives of the 47 Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The Recommendation calling for “democratic governance of AI” urges the Committee of Ministers to “support the elaboration of a legally binding instrument governing artificial intelligence, possibly in the form of a convention”.
The Council of Europe has already set up an ad hoc committee on AI (CAHAI) to examine the feasibility of such a legal framework. The Assembly says that this is indispensable, and does not believe in “soft-law instruments” and “self-regulation” in the field of AI. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)