US, UK, EU to forge historic first global AI agreement

The US, UK, and EU are going to sign the first international AI treaty. This will set global standards for responsible AI creation and protect human rights.

The European Union, the United States, and Britain are among the countries that worked on the first legally binding international AI pact. It will be open for signature on Thursday by those countries, as well as members of the European Union.

The AI Convention was finally approved in May after years of work and talks between 57 countries. It talks about the dangers AI could bring and encourages responsible innovation.

The EU AI Act, which went into effect last month, is not the same as the AI Convention. Protection of human rights for people hurt by AI systems is what the AI Convention is all about. The EU’s AI Act includes strict rules on how AI systems can be built, used, and deployed within the EU’s internal market.

The Council of Europe is an international group that was created in 1949 and is separate from the EU. Its job is to protect human rights, and 46 countries are members, including all 27 EU member states.

In 2019, a temporary group looked into whether or not an AI framework standard would work. By 2022, there was a specialized AI team working on writing and finalizing the treaty text.

Francesca Fanucci, a law expert at ECNL who helped write the treaty with other civil society groups, told Reuters that the agreement had been weakened to a broad set of principles.