UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL 56th session.
Item 9 - nteractive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Statement by EU Permanent Delegation to the United Nations Office and other international organisations in Geneva.
8 July 2024
Mr Chair,
The European Union thanks the Special Rapporteur for her most recent report on how to manage and regulate emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence to prevent and address racial discrimination.
Madam Special Rapporteur,
Emerging technologies have the potential to promote and strengthen democracy, peace, and human rights. However, as you rightfully describe in your report, while artificial intelligence does have positive potential, including for equality and inclusion, it is not a panacea for all societal issues and must be effectively managed to balance its benefits and risks. Indeed, if not properly managed and regulated through its lifecycle, artificial intelligence can contribute to manifestations of racial discrimination, for example as a result of data set problems, poorly designed algorithms or intentional discriminatory use.
For these reasons, the EU has recently adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act. The objective of the Act is to promote trustworthy and human-centric AI and ensure that AI systems used in the EU are safe and respect values such as respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and human rights, including the right not to be discriminated against. Particularly harmful practices such as social scoring of individuals leading to detrimental or unfavourable treatment; harmful manipulation and exploitation of vulnerabilities; and biometric categorisation systems classifying individuals according to certain protected characteristics are being banned under the Act. With regard to generative AI, the Act explicitly requires labelling.
The AI Act is the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on AI. The next step is to implement the Act and carefully monitor its functioning.
Madam Special Rapporteur,
What other best practices did you come across while preparing this report?
I thank you.