Regulating the future: A look at the EUs plan to reboot product liability rules for AI
Summary
Considering how opaque and complex AI systems are, these conditions will make it de facto impossible for consumers to use their right to compensation for damages.” “It is essential that liability rules catch up with the fact we are increasingly surrounded by digital and AI-driven products and services like home assistants or insurance policies based on personalised pricing. However, consumers are going to be less well protected when it comes to AI services, because they will have to prove the operator was at fault or negligent in order to claim compensation for damages,” added deputy director general, Ursula Pachl, in an accompanying statement responding to the Commission proposal. It’s also fair to say the Commission looks to be trying to strike a balance between going in too hard and chilling the development of new AI driven services — while putting up eye-catching enough warning signs to make technologists pay attention to consumer risks and try to prevent an accountability ‘black hole’ letting harms scale out of control. The AI Act itself is clearly intended as a core preventative framework here — shrinking risks and harms attached to certain applications of cutting edge technologies by forcing system developers to consider trust and safety issues up front, with the threat of penalties for non-compliance. Or how would that impact on iterations of AI systems — it’s perhaps, I think, the challenge as well [for the Commission],” she said, adding: “I would have though most people would agree there needs to be a careful balance.” While the U.K. is no longer a member of the EU, she suggested local lawmakers will be keen to promote a similar balance between bolstering consumer protections and encouraging technology development for any U.K. liability reforms, suggesting: “I’d be surprised if [the U.K.] did anything that was significantly different and say more difficult for the parties involved — behind the development of the AI and the potential defendants — because I would have thought they want to get the same balance.” In the meanwhile, the EU continues leading the charge on regulating tech globally — now keenly pressing ahead with rebooting product liability rules for the age of AI, with Chandler noting, for example, the relatively short feedback period it’s provided for responding to the Commission proposal (which she suggests means critiques like BEUC’s may not generate much pause for thought in the short term).