Debate: Artificial intelligence in criminal law and its use by the police and judicial authorities in criminal matters
Date: MONDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2021
Speaker: Petar Vitanov
Country: Spain
Language: EN

AI is not a product in itself, but it’s a method, it’s a tool, and, as such, it needs to be conditioned to the overarching goal of improving the well-being of our citizens. The technology holds great promise if it’s developed and used in an ethical and trustworthy manner, but at the same time, it implies considerable risks for fundamental rights, democracy and the rule of law.  As co-legislators, we bear enormous responsibility towards European citizens. We need to draw clear red lines for AI—based systems that violate fundamental rights. If we are serious about safeguarding people’s safety and well-being, we need to include in the future legislation that can possibly ban or prohibit applications of AI that are incompatible with fundamental rights. Technical progress should never come at the expense of people’s fundamental rights.  It’s not a question of whether the AI systems have the potential to result in racially biased and discriminatory outcomes. We actually know for sure that this is the case. We see the confirmation of this in the data provided by multiple NGOs. We saw it during the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) mission to Washington last year, and, just a couple of weeks ago, we heard it from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And no, AI is not dangerous only when used by autocratic governments. Where the technology is flawed, it is flawed no matter who uses it and for what purposes. The good intention does not justify the means.  There have been numerous cases of people being treated unjustly because of AI, such as being denied social security benefits because of faulty AI tools, or even being arrested because of flawed facial recognition, and somehow I’m not surprised that the victims are always the poor, the immigrants, the coloured or the Eastern Europeans. The American Civil Liberties Union demonstrated to the US Congress in May 2019 that the error rate with facial recognition of coloured people is higher, basically leading to de facto discrimination. They described facial recognition technology as unregulated, dangerous, racially biased and often untested. Using facial recognition in public areas may interfere with a person’s freedom of opinion and expression simply because of the fact that the protection of group anonymity no longer exists if everyone in the group could potentially be recognised. This could lead to those individuals changing their behaviour, for example by no longer participating in peaceful strikes or demonstrations. Predictive, profiling and risk-assessment AI and ultimate decision—making systems target individuals and profile them as criminals, resulting in serious criminal justice and civil outcomes and punishments before they have carried out the alleged action for which they are being profiled. I always thought that this could only happen in the movies! In essence, the very purpose of the systems is to undermine the fundamental right to be presumed innocent.  Colleagues, I really hope that we can have a serious debate and I’m looking forward to it, but I’m pretty confident that we will place fundamental rights before technological progress, and even before security, because there cannot be any security without freedom.