In April 2021, the European Commission proposed a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence, known as the AI Act. In their recent paper, Michael Veale and Frederike Zuiderveen Borgesius present an overview of the Act and analyze its implications, drawing on scholarship ranging from the study of contemporary AI practices to the structure of EU product safety regimes over the last four decades. In their view, aspects of the AI Act, such as different rules for different risk-levels of AI, make sense. But they also find that some provisions of the proposal have surprising legal implications, whilst others may be largely ineffective at achieving their stated goals. Several overarching aspects, including the enforcement regime and the risks of maximum harmonization pre-empting legitimate national AI policy, engender significant concern. They argue that these issues should be addressed as a priority in the legislative process.

In this session of the Guarini Colloquium: Regulating Global Digital Corporations, we were joined by Michael Veale to discuss the EU proposal for an AI Act with our students and other participants.