Following the success of Responsible AI: A Global Policy Framework published in 2019 and updated in 2021, McCarthy Tétrault partner Charles Morgan, alongside an extraordinary group of ITechLaw Association thought leaders, contributed to a Green Paper on the proposed draft EU Artificial Intelligence Act (the AIA), published at the iTechLaw 2022 World Conference in San Francisco.

The AI Green Paper 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 (formerly of CMS) and Patricia Shaw (of Beyond Reach Consulting), the Green Paper leverages ITechLaw's own Responsible AI Principles as a lens through which to benchmark and provide formal commentary on the draft EU AIA.

 The key findings of the Green Paper are as follows:

• 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 emphasize 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

Download The EU AIA: Green Paper Policy Analysis.

Join the conversation and learn more by visiting McCarthy Tétrault’s Cyber/Data page, or by contacting contributing author and former President of the International Technology Lawyers Association (iTechLaw) Charles Morgan.