Alphabet Inc chief executive officer Sundar Pichai yesterday urged the US and EU to coordinate regulatory approaches on artificial intelligence (AI), calling their alignment “critical.”
In a rare public speech in Brussels at an event hosted by the European economic think tank Bruegel, Pichai, who is also chief executive officer of Google LLC, said “there is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated,” but that “we don’t have to start from scratch” with entirely new rules in some cases.
Tech giants need to be given a say as governments formulate AI regulatory policy, he said.
“All of us have to do this together,” he said. “I think going it alone won’t work for anyone
The comments came weeks before the EU is set to unveil its plans to legislate the technology, which could include new legally binding requirements for AI developers in “high-risk sectors,” such as healthcare and transport, according to an early draft obtained by Bloomberg.
The new rules could require companies to be transparent about how they build their systems.
Later in the day Pichai was due to meet with EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is responsible for more than 8 billion euros (US$8.9 billion) of antitrust fines levied against Google, and oversees the bloc’s digital policies, including the plans to legislate AI, as well as European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who is spearheading the EU’s fight against climate change.
Alphabet has battled intense regulatory pressure in Europe for years. It is challenging the EU’s multibillion-dollar antitrust fines and has sought to fight off copyright and other forms of platform regulation emanating from Brussels in the past few years.
Pichai cautiously welcomed plans for rules that take “a proportionate approach, balancing potential harms with social opportunities.”
Facial recognition technology and so-called deep fakes — or manipulated audio and video clips — are two areas where AI could be used destructively, and companies have a responsibility “to get this right,” he said.
Google has released open datasets to help researchers build better tools to detect fakes, but has chosen not to offer general-purpose facial recognition application programming interfaces, he said.
Pichai touted the company’s recent developments in AI, including a Google Health algorithm that can spot breast cancer more accurately than doctors and other research for accurately predicting the weather as well as advancements by its self-driving vehicle unit, Waymo.
He said existing rules such as Europe’s privacy legislation, the General Data Protection Regulation, and regulation for medical devices, such as AI-assisted heart monitors, would serve as strong foundations for governing AI in some areas, but governments need to establish regulations covering self-driving vehicles.
Google has come under intense criticism over how it handles users’ privacy with some of its AI projects.
Google faces a US federal inquiry after the Wall Street Journal in November last year reported how it collects the healthcare data from millions of Americans to design new AI software.
It is also facing scrutiny over the methods it uses for training algorithms that run Google Assistant.
Additional reporting by AFP
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