U.S., Britain, EU Set to Sign First International AI Treaty

The European Union, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States are among the countries set to sign the first legally binding international treaty on (Artificial intelligence) AI, signed in Lithuania. 

Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić reported that the three would sign the Council of Europe’s AI treaty on Thursday. 

It also stated that more than 50 nations, including Canada, Israel, Japan, and Australia, had worked on the convention’s draughting for more than two years.

Adopted in May of last year, the treaty is the first legally binding document on an international level. It lays out a legal framework that addresses the dangers associated with artificial intelligence (AI) systems throughout their whole lifecycle and encourages responsible innovation.

The Council of Europe approved the new framework, which is available here. 

Signatories are obligated to regulate AI products and safeguard the public from potential abuse by taking “collective action.”

Given that AI is arguably already undermining democracy, human rights protections, and the rule of law—you only need to look at the misinformation that is produced during election campaigns and the court cases about copyright and intellectual property to see that challenges already exist—the treaty’s impact is still unclear. 

The Council of Europe defines artificial intelligence as: “A machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations or decisions that may influence physical or virtual environments.“

Different artificial intelligence systems vary in their levels of autonomy and adaptiveness after deployment.”

Unlike the EU’s AI Act, which went into effect in early August, non-EU nations can sign it. The treaty also addresses the application of AI systems in the public and private sectors, providing distinct frameworks for adhering to its principles and duties in the context of private sector regulation.

“The Framework Convention is an open treaty with a potentially global reach. I hope that these will be the first of many signatures and that they will be followed quickly by ratifications, so that the treaty can enter into force as soon as possible,” Marija Pejčinović Burić said.

We earlier reported that the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) said that PayPal Europe had been fined $27.3 million by Poland’s competition authority for its failure to sufficiently notify consumers in its contractual provisions about the activities that will result in fines.