This week, we had a plenary session in the Parliament. Amongst other topics, there was also a report on the artificial intelligence.

AI is a hot topic.It is closely followed by leaders from a variety of fields. Politicians focus on regulations and (hard) laws, industry is looking to innovate, researchers present the endless possibilities and also threats that can come with the use of AI.

About a year ago, European Commission introduced the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (https://ec.europa.eu/info/files/white-paper-artificial-intelligence-european-approach-excellence-and-trust_en). The Commission recognises the huge potential AI has and stresses the importance of an approach that is human-centric, ethical, sustainable and respects fundamental rights and values. Our political group, Renew Europe, created a position paper on AI, where we stress similarly that Europe’s AI approach should proactively influence AI development worldwide, in line with our European values (https://reneweuropegroup.eu/en/news/1427-renew-europe-position-paper-on-artificial-intelligence/).

Now, back to the plenary session. In the AI report, one of the amendments talk about a moratorium on the use of facial recognition systems in public spaces. There should surely be assessments and evaluations on such an innovative new system. But to ban facial recognition for years until we make some standards and at the same time want to call ourselves norm-setters in the world, who will wait for us? It is very easy to kill innovation when we overregulate rapidly developing areas.

Europe should take a holistic approach in AI. The regulation should focus on the sensitive areas and not (over)regulate other areas. Access to data is a core of artificial intelligence. Industrial data is vital for Europe’s start-ups and SMEs. I hope the regulators focus on the importance of data and funding when it comes to AI.