Green Paper launched by the ITechLaw Association on the proposed EU AIA Act

The ITechLaw Association has officially launched a Green Paper on the proposed draft EU Artificial Intelligence Act (the AIA) at its 2022 Global Technology Conference.  It is the collective effort of 34 lawyers in 32 law firms across 14 international jurisdictions co-edited by Osborne Clarke's John Buyers.  

The Green Paper is a formal commentary and benchmarking of the EU's AIA against ITechLaw's own Responsible AI Principles†.  It is the collective effort of 34 lawyers in 32 law firms across 14 international jurisdictions, co-edited by John Buyers (Partner and head of Osborne Clarke's AI Practice++), Susan Barty (of CMS) and Patricia Shaw (of Beyond Reach Consulting). 

The Green Paper has been distributed to all members of the EU's DG CNET unit responsible for EU AI Policy, including Commissioner Killian Gross and influential AI policy makers around the globe.  

The key findings of the Green Paper are as follows (all set out in the Executive Summary section):

• The product liability focus of the draft AIA inevitably means a focus on compliance and conformity assessments for particular use cases rather than outcomes based harms;
• individual EU subjects are not granted sufficient rights of redress under the AIA (in particular to understand how algorithmic decisions that have been made) and further clarity is needed to emphasise that a human should always be ultimately accountable;
• blanket exclusions on military use and limited restrictions on real time biometric surveillance have the potential to undermine the efficacy of the AIA;
• the AIA introduces a significant compliance burden (in particular for SMEs) and it remains unclear what compliance steps will need to be taken by Producers, Users and Distributors of AI in the EU (particularly in the context of the fragmented AI ecosystem of MLOps); and 
• more needs to be done to make AI in the EU sustainable and environmentally friendly

For further details, comments and interview requests please contact:

• Chris Bond (UK based) Osborne Clarke PR Manager (M: +44 7467 337 032, T: +44 207 105 7886) (chris.bond@osborneclarke.com)
• Emily Burch (USA based) ITechLaw Managing Director (T: +1 312 227 0767) (emily.burch@itechlaw.org)

**ITechLaw Association is based in McLean, Virginia USA.  It is the leading global organisation for legal professionals focused on technology and law. It has been serving the technology law community worldwide since 1971.

ITechLaw has a global membership base representing more than 70 countries on six continents. Its members reflect a broad spectrum of expertise in the technology law field. Our mission is to create unparalleled opportunities for international networking and for the exchange of knowledge with experts and colleagues around the world. ITechLaw is a thought leader in many areas of technology law, including as regards the responsible development, deployment and use of artificial intelligence.

++Osborne Clarke LLP is a leading international law firm headquartered in London with offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, China, India via BTG Legal, Singapore, the United States and Poland. The firm has over 270 partners and 1,600 employees spread across its 27 offices around the world. 

†Responsible AI, 2021 Update is available for download here.