Oct 2024

Introduction: Artificial Intelligence (Second Edition)

There is an oft quoted saying that a week is a long time in politics. The phrase is doubly relevant in a year which not only sees some 64 nations across the world (about 49% of the world’s population) undergoing national elections and driving democratic change, but also as a metaphor for the exponential growth in usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) globally, itself as a driver for change.

Unfortunately, as with any powerful technology, AI can be used as a force for evil as well as for good. It is being deployed ever more in the world’s battlefields, of which there are, depressingly, many. To take a specific example, the war between Ukraine and Russia is seeing extensive use of both semi-autonomous drones and loitering munitions, both of which can identify and engage targets on the basis of pre-trained criteria.

It is in the increasingly challenging environment presented by today’s society that we introduce to you our second edition of the Artificial Intelligence Law Over Borders Comparative Guide.

As ever, it has been a great privilege to work with some of the world’s foremost AI practitioners and to edit this ambitious reference work, which seeks to provide an international comparative guide to global AI regulation. As I heralded in the first edition, its timing is serendipitous as the European Union has now completed the arduous task of finalising its much vaunted Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AIA), which should be definitive law by the time this work is published.

Attention within the EU is now rightly shifting to governance programmes to ensure that the detailed provisions of the EU AIA can be complied with. Given that guidelines on implementation are not likely to emerge until spring 2025 at the latest, companies are now faced with the task of identifying the specific intent of the European Commission from the bare articles and recitals of the measure: not easy when one considers that AI (especially in its generative form) is still a relatively novel technology. This interest spreads beyond the borders of the EU as well, as it has become evident that the EU AIA is hugely extra-territorial in its scope. As I hinted in the introduction to the first edition, this extra-territoriality is no mistake. The stated intent of the EU is to imprint its best practice in AI methodology on the world in much the same manner as it did successfully with data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) some six years ago.

We wait to see what clarification is ultimately provided by the European Office for AI, which has yet to be established. In the meantime, wherever you are based — and especially if you are targeting AI enabled products and services on the European market — you should at the very least give some consideration to the potential impact of the EU AIA on your business. Our European chapter, authored by Benjamin Docquir of Osborne Clarke Belgium, should provide you with some insights.

Aside from the clear implications of new laws on AI coming into effect in Europe, it should also be borne in mind that another huge and leading market for high technology, China, has been very active in this space. China was in fact the first nation (contrary to the claims of EU commissioner Thierry Breton) to regulate AI. I’m delighted to welcome Global Law Office of Shanghai to our list of authors with their inaugural chapter on Chinese AI law. It should make for a fascinating read.

As was an underlying theme of the first edition of this guide, understanding the regulatory implications of AI can prove to be a challenging exercise, wherever in the world you are based. In addition to the application of laws (such as, for example, those on bias and discrimination) which were never intended to address the technology, one is now faced with the additional complex task of interpreting fledgling AI specific laws.

Nevertheless, the core considerations remain the same. Nations stand at an inflection point between addressing concerns with the technology and encouraging investment in developing and refining AI further to provide economic growth.

One thing is clear. Law and regulation in this field continues to advance at a lightning pace. This second edition of our Artificial Intelligence Law Over Borders Comparative Guide maintains the pace towards what is likely to be a dramatic and accelerated evolution. We endeavour to provide you with appropriate signposts!

The law in this edition is as stated in July 2024.