The European Parliament recently issued a resolution directed at the European Commission on its concerns with automated decision-making processes and artificial intelligence. While the EU Parliament addresses several areas of automated decision-making, the underlying theme of this resolution is that the Commission should ensure that there is transparency and human oversight of these processes. In particular, the EU Parliament stresses that consumers should be properly informed about how the automated decision-making functions, be protected from harm, and, particularly with automated decision-making in professional services, that humans are always responsible and able to overrule decisions.  Additionally, this resolution stresses the need for a risk-based approach to regulating AI and automated decision-making and for the availability of large amounts of high quality data, while at the same time protecting any personal data under GDPR.

These concerns look to provide valuable input to the European Commission, as it gathers public commentary on its recently published white paper on artificial intelligence. Through this paper, the Commission hopes to offer policy options to encourage a trustworthy and secure development of AI, while still respecting European values and rights.

Putting it Into Practice: Companies using or considering the use of automated decision-making or AI should keep in mind the EU’s focus on both the level of human oversight and transparency with individuals about use of AI.