The co-rapporteurs on the future legislation on artificial intelligence (AI Act) (see EUROPE 13160/10), Ioan-Dragoş Tudorache (Renew Europe, Romanian) and Brando Benifei (S&D, Italian), together with several shadow rapporteurs from the ranks of the EPP, S&D, Greens/EFA and ECR Groups, called on the European Commission and US President Joe Biden, on Monday 17 April, to organise a high-level global summit on artificial intelligence (AI).
Against the backdrop of the deployment of new general-purpose AI systems that are readily available to the public and growing concern among some experts about their development, the summit could “agree on a preliminary set of guiding principles for the development, control and deployment of high performance artificial intelligence”, they say.
In addition, MEPs would like the leaders of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) to agree on a preliminary agenda for the AI summit at the next TTC meeting.
Furthermore, MEPs call on democratic countries to reflect on potential systems of governance, control, co-creation and support for the development of AI systems for general use. They also call on “non-democratic countries” to show “restraint and responsibility in their research” on AI.
MEPs also call on companies and laboratories working on AI to “redouble their efforts to ensure that their models are safe and trustworthy, to significantly increase transparency and dialogue with regulators and to ensure that they retain control over the evolution of the artificial intelligence they are building”.
“Together we can steer history in the right direction”, MEPs conclude.
This call for global reflection comes as the report on AI is due to be voted on in the European Parliament’s Committee on 26 April, in preparation for future interinstitutional negotiations (see EUROPE 13155/5). (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)