BSC Calls on the European Commission to Promote Mechanisms to Assess the Ethical Risks of AI

June 17, 2020 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center urges the European Commission (EC) to promote efficient mechanisms that help assess the ethical risks of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The BSC has submitted a specific statement to the EC after it has published the “White Paper on Artificial Intelligence,” aimed at raising a European ecosystem of excellence and trust in AI. In this text, the EC plan to develop this technique according to the fundamental rights of Europe is detailed.

It considers necessary to promote the adoption of principles of fairness, responsibility, confidentiality and transparency in AI-based applications to increase the trust and long-term commitment of citizens. Image courtesy of BSC.

The BSC has enthusiastically received this publication as it represents a step forward to put Europe at the forefront of this technology. The center also calls on the European Commission to promote technological sovereignty not only in the areas of AI and supercomputing. “We encourage the EC to commit to establishing and maintaining the appropriate conditions that will allow continuous access to public data, knowledge and technology necessary for growing research and innovation,” according to the letter from the BSC. Within this new digital framework, Europe’s ethical, socio-economic, legal and cultural values (ELSEC) are the starting point for a humanistic AI. “Safeguarding European values and freedoms is a crucial objective to maintain our identity”, the text continues.

In its letter to the EC, the BSC also points out the need to promote the principles of fairness, responsibility, confidentiality and transparency in AI-based applications in areas that require reliability and security. For the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, these principles are basic to increase citizens’ confidence in AI systems.

In the opinion of the BSC, the EC should promote mechanisms that help assess current ethical risks, especially the prejudices derived from the use of AI-based technologies. Furthermore, “we urge the EC to continue developing a reliable and innovative strategy that allows us to become international leaders in both AI and high-performance computing. We encourage the member states to prepare national plans, strategies and procedures that align with the European commons”. The BSC believes that EU programmes should allocate and channel substantial funds to be able to address AI and supercomputing challenges to prevent the spending gap with the US. USA and China is broader.

For the position paper, visit AI Position Paper.

About BSC

Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the national supercomputing centre in Spain. The center is specialised in high performance computing (HPC) and manage MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, located in the Torre Girona chapel. BSC is involved in a number of projects to design and develop energy efficient and high performance chips, based on open architectures like RISC-V, for use within future exascale supercomputers and other high performance domains. The centre leads the pillar of the European Processor Project (EPI), creating a high performance accelerator based on RISC-V. More information: www.bsc.es

Source: Barcelona Supercomputing Center