Response to the European Commission’s Consultation on Artificial Intelligence: A European approach to excellence and trust

The European approach for Artificial Intelligence (AI) aims to promote Europe’s innovation capacity in AI while supporting the development and uptake of ethical and trustworthy AI across the European Union (EU). According to this approach, AI should work for people and be a force for good in society. The European Commission’s (EC) Digital Strategy (2019 – 2024) proposes: that new legislation on AI should be adapted to the risks, it should be effective but not limit innovation; to require high-risk AI systems to be transparent, traceable and under human control; that authorities must be able to check AI systems as they check cosmetics, cars or toys; to ensure unbiased data sets; to launch an EU-wide debate on the use of remote biometric identification (e.g. facial recognition). As part of this strategy, the EC has invited commentary through a public consultation. This below publication is a response to the European Commission’s Consultation from Loughborough University Systems Engineering researchers Dr Melanie King and Paul Timms. In this publication, we provide both general comments on the EC’s white paper, and provide specific responses to the three main sections of the survey.