The European Union and the United States set a joint statement Friday confirming the desire to increase cooperation in relation to artificial intelligence. The agreement covers the security and governance of artificial intelligence, but also, more broadly, the intention to cooperate on various other technological issues, such as the development of digital identity standards and lobbying platforms to defend human rights.
As we reported on Wednesday, this is the fruit of the sixth (and possibly final) meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC). The TTC has been meeting since 2021 in an effort to rebuild transatlantic relations battered by the Trump presidency.
Given the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House in the US presidential election later this year, it is unclear how much EU-US cooperation will do in artificial intelligence or any other strategic technology area. actually happen in the near future.
But under the current political makeup across the Atlantic, the will to push for closer alignment on a range of technology issues has strengthened. There is also a mutual desire to hear that message – hence today’s joint statement – which is itself, perhaps, a broader appeal to voters on each side to choose a program of cooperation, rather than a destructive adversarial one, the election time.
An AI dialogue
In a section of the AI-focused joint statement, filed under the title “Advancing Transatlantic Leadership on Critical and Emerging Technologies,” the pair write that they “reaffirm our commitment to a risk-based approach to AI … and to promoting of security, safe and reliable AI technologies.”
“We encourage advanced AI developers in the United States and Europe to promote its implementation Hiroshima Process International Code of Conduct for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems that complements our respective systems of governance and regulation,” the statement also said, referring to a set of risk-based recommendations that emerged from G7 discussions on artificial intelligence last year.
The main development from the sixth TTC meeting appears to be the commitment of the EU and US AI watchdogs, the European Office of Artificial Intelligence and the US Artificial Intelligence Security Institute, to establish what has been termed a “dialogue”. The goal is a deeper collaboration between AI institutions, with a particular focus on encouraging the exchange of scientific information between the respective AI research ecosystems.
Topics highlighted here include benchmarks, potential risks and future technology trends.
“This collaboration will help make progress with its implementation Common roadmap for assessment and measurement tools for reliable AI and risk managementwhich is necessary to minimize divergence as befits the respective emerging systems of artificial intelligence governance and regulation and to cooperate on interoperable and international standards,” the two sides propose.
The statement also points out a upgraded version of a list of key AI terms, with “mutually agreed common definitions” as another outcome of ongoing stakeholder conversations stemming from the TTC.
Agreement on definitions will be a key piece of the puzzle to support work towards the standardization of artificial intelligence.
A third element of the EU-US agreement on artificial intelligence calls for cooperation to advance research aimed at applying machine learning technologies to beneficial use cases such as advancing healthcare outcomes, enhancing agriculture and tackling climate change, with a particular emphasis on sustainable development. In a briefing with reporters earlier this week, a senior Commission official suggested that this element of the joint work would focus on advancing artificial intelligence in developing countries and the global south.
“We are advancing the promise of artificial intelligence for sustainable development in our bilateral relationship through joint research collaboration as part of the Administrative Arrangement on Artificial Intelligence and Computing to Address Global Public Good Challenges,” the joint statement said. “Working groups staffed jointly by United States scientific agencies and European Commission departments and agencies have made significant progress defining critical milestones for deliverables in the areas of extreme weather, energy, emergency response and reconstruction. We are also making constructive progress in health and agriculture.”
In addition, one overview paper on cooperation around artificial intelligence for the common good published on Friday. According to the paper, interdisciplinary teams from the EU and the US have spent more than 100 hours in scientific meetings in the past semester “discussing how to advance AI applications in ongoing projects and workflows.”
“The collaboration is making positive strides in a number of areas in relation to challenges such as energy optimization, emergency response, urban reconstruction and extreme weather and climate forecasting,” he continued, adding: “In the coming months, scientific experts and ecosystems in the EU and the United States intend to continue to promote their cooperation and present innovative research globally. This will unlock the power of artificial intelligence to address global challenges.”
According to the joint statement, there is a desire to expand cooperation efforts in this area by adding more global partners.
“We will continue to explore opportunities with our partners in the UK, Canada and Germany in the AI for Development Donor Partnership to accelerate and align our foreign aid in Africa to support educators, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens to realize the promise of AI,” the EU and US note.
On platforms, an area where the EU imposes far-reaching legislation — including laws such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act — the two sides are united in calling for Big Tech to take on protecting the “integrity of the information”. seriously.
The joint statement refers to 2024 as a “Pivotal Year for Democratic Resilience” due to the number of elections being held around the world. It includes an explicit warning about threats from AI-generated information, saying the two sides “share the concern that the misuse of AI applications, such as the creation of harmful ‘deepfakes’, poses new risks, including the further spread and targeting manipulation and foreign intelligence interference’.
It then discusses some areas of ongoing EU-US cooperation on platform governance and includes a joint call for platforms to do more to support researchers’ access to data — especially for the study of societal risks (which the EU’s DSA does legal requirement for larger platforms).
On e-ID, the statement refers to ongoing collaboration on standards work, adding: “The next phase of this work will focus on identifying potential use cases for transatlantic interoperability and collaboration to enable cross-border use of digital identities and wallets .”
Other areas of cooperation covered by the statement include clean energy, quantum and 6G.
