The committee’s report flagged gaps in UK’s AI laws that fail to account for AI lifecycle complexity
The joint committee on human rights in the UK has urged the UK government to introduce a new artificial intelligence-focused legal framework that accounts for AI lifecycle complexity, reported the Law Society Gazette.
The committee described current AI laws as “fragmented” in a statement published by the Gazette. It noted that those who deploy AI are held liable instead of systems developers.
“This means that existing laws do not take due account of the complexity of the AI lifecycle and supply chain and are not directed to the actor that may be best placed to identify and avert the source of risks. They are therefore likely to allow human rights harm that could have been prevented,” the committee wrote in a snippet of the report published by the Gazette.
The committee’s call for evidence noted that implementing AI systems into court proceedings could infringe on the right to a fair trial under article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“AI is heralded as an unprecedented era of technological development with the potential to transform our lives for better or for worse. It is moving with such speed and complexity that its impact is hard to accurately predict. What is clear is that at present we are unprepared to deal with its consequences however potentially dire they may be,” said Alex Sobel, committee chair, in a statement published by the Gazette.
Dario Amodei, CEO of AI giant Anthropic, had said in a statement on Saturday September 12 that AI development needed to slow down as safety measures were lagging behind. His call was supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
The independent hacking of Hugging Face by an OpenAI system in July had raised alarm bells regarding controls on AI. Amodei urged AI companies to allow external evaluators to track their safety practices; both Anthropic and OpenAI have committed to providing desks, access badges, and company laptops at their companies, according to the Associated Press.
Sobel pointed out that legislative and regulatory approaches to AI were lacking worldwide.
“Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose. New legislation is needed to establish a comprehensive set of protections that deal with the entire AI supply chain and its lifecycle. A single AI regulator should be established to set policy, monitor performance and with the teeth to ensure enforcement,” Sobel said in a statement published by the Gazette.
