 Good afternoon to you all. I hope you're all keeping well and staying safe. My name is Joyce O'Connor and I chair the digital group here at the IIEA. A very warm welcome to our webinar on regulatory artificial intelligence, the strategic implications of AI and new technologies. A special welcome to our speaker, Dragos Tudoraki, Chair of the European Parliament Committee on artificial intelligence. You're very welcome, Dragos, and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today. Dragos will speak to us for about 20-25 minutes, and I'll go to the questions and answers to your audience for any comments or questions that you may have. You can join our discussion using the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen, and please send in your questions during the presentation if they occur to you at that time. I'll come to you once Dragos has finished his presentation. It'd be very helpful if you gave your name and affiliation when you ask a question. Thank you very much for that. Our Twitter handle is at IIEA, so join us there, and as usual, the presentation and questions and answers are on the record. Dragos, your presentation today is very timely. It's just three weeks ago that the EU published the AI regulations, 110 pages, a lot of detailed work there on how to govern the use of artificial intelligence. First of its kind policy, it outlines how companies and governments can use a technology seen as one of the most significant but ethically fraught scientific developments in recent memory. Artificial intelligence in which machines are trained to perform jobs and make decisions on their own by studying high volumes of data, seen by technologists, business leaders, and government officials as one of the world's most transformative technology, promising major digital transformation and productivity gains. Of course, the systems become more sophisticated. It will become harder to understand why the software is making a decision, a problem that could become more problematic as computers become more powerful. Researchers have raised ethical questions about its use, suggesting that it could perpetuate existing biases in society, invade privacy, or result in more jobs being automated. As Margarita Vestiger, the Vice President of the Commission has said, trust is a must, not a nice to have. With these landmark rules and regulations, the EU is spearheading the development of new global norms to make sure AI can be trusted. So the Commission's proposal is structured around developing trust in the technology by proposing the first EU legal framework intended to regulate AI applications at European level. It also plans to launch a coordinated plan with national governments to boost investment in skills and infrastructure. In this address, Dragos will outline how AI and frontiers technologies are transforming the geopolitical landscape. Dragos will address how AI can benefit the economy and society, but also poses risks for us and be misused by authoritarian regimes. He will assess these regulations and discuss the importance of shaping the rules of the digital future so that AI can be a force for good worldwide and not just in Europe. Dragos Tukuraki is chair of the European Parliament's special committee on artificial intelligence in the digital age, set up in June just a year ago. He is a very distinguished career to date, and I just go over some of his accomplishments today. He began his career as a judge and led the legal departments of OCSE and the UN mission in Kosovo. Working on justice and anti-corruption as the Commissioner represented in Romania, he supported the Romanian EU session. He joined the Commission managing a number of key strategic unions and projects such as the Schengen information system, the visa information, and the establishment of the EU visa. During the migration crisis, he led the coordination and strategy in the unit in DG Home. Between 2015 and 17, he served in the Romanian government as Minister of Communications and the Digital Society and the Minister for the Interior. As chair of ADA, he sits on a range of committees and delegations, including the European Parliament's delegation with the United States. Dragos, we look forward to your presentation. Thank you very much, Joyce. Thank you very much for the invitation. It's true that it is timely and I'll be very direct. I'm happy that finally we are out of the real speculation because for the last year, since AI has come very much on the top of the agenda in all sorts of conversations here in Brussels, we were all speculating as to what ultimately the Commission will do with its proposal. We had the white paper, we had the very broad consultation that was prompted by the white paper and the different stakeholders around AI were of course trying to push what they thought was important, relevant, and how the Commission should frame it. So again, I'm happy that finally now we are out of second guessing and we actually have the proposal on the table so we can actually concretely address preparing for the very complex negotiations that we will have in Parliament and with the Council around this proposal but again now we have something concrete to chew on. And with your permission, I will leave that for the second part of my address going a bit through what I believe are the major highlights in this text. I'll start maybe with this element of the strategic or even geo-strategic implication of AI and I'll start in fact from my personal motivation to work on AI. We have very kindly listed some of the areas of interest in my past and you would have seen that digital was not part of what I used to do. I'm a lawyer by training, I've dealt with justice, home affairs, migration, borders, very much in that area for the biggest part of my career. And somewhat digital, I'm actually personally, I'm a digital idiot, I can barely use my phone and certainly my kids are much smarter than I am when it comes to latest technologies. But somehow what prompted me to to grow an interest in this and particularly in AI was precisely the very profound transformative effect that I considered the digital revolution will have on our societies. And in a way, if we take every industrial revolution in human history, they all transformed our economies, they all transformed our way of life. So one could say, well, there's nothing new. Yet again, another industrial revolution, a new set of technologies which yeah, certainly will change, will change the way we do business, maybe the way we conduct our personal lives, the way we conduct our professional lives, but ultimately it is just another piece of technology, another tool, which we will then need to learn how to use, adapt. Of course, it will create some ripple effects, but again, it is nothing new. Well, this is where I beg to differ in the sense that I did see this coming and in a way again, that is what prompted my interest and why I decided in this mandate in the parliament to make AI a centerpiece of my of my focus. That is why I have actually fought a lot for the creation of this special committee on artificial intelligence. That is why I'm also chairing it. And if you look also, Joyce, you've you've again very kindly listed some of the things that I also do in parliament. None of them are a coincidence. I sit in the EU US delegation for a reason. I also sit in the EU China delegation for a reason. I also sit in the foreign affairs committee and the security defense committee for a reason. All of these things do align and also in the civil liberties committee committee for a reason. Again, all of these align precisely on this point of the profound geopolitical and strategic implication that frontier technologies, the digital transformation in general and artificial intelligence as the spearhead of this digital transformation will have are having already, but will have in the future for how we will conduct business in the world and for the world view and the world vision of tomorrow. Why is that? So why is in my humble opinion AI somewhat different than the previous industrial revolutions and transformations of the past? Because somehow it comes with implications that challenge the status quo more profoundly than before. At the surface or the things that everyone talks about, you would say, well, of course, we are interacting as human beings differently because of the digitalization of our lives. COVID has just prompted an acceleration of the change also in our professional environments when we're no longer working in offices. We are working online and that is something that certainly is going to stay with us even after COVID for a great number of us fortunately or unfortunately. And of course, it's going to change some of the work processes for many of us and is going to have an impact on the labor market and so forth. But these are again some of the things that other technologies that were introduced in the past prompted us changes. For me, the digital transformation in AI is changing also or risks changing or maybe the risk is not the right word or will somewhat impact things that are a bit more profound. And from my point of view, I don't want to be philosophical, but will strategically change the status quo. And I will start with democracy. And in fact, that was my top concern when I again picked up AI. I think that the way and the rhythm and the outcome of us going virtual is posing a fundamental challenge to how our democracies look like. Why is that? First, because I think it brings a challenge like never before to the state itself. The organization of the state, as we've known in this best failure, meant that you had the state authority with a monopoly on certain services that it was providing to its citizens. And with a monopoly on power with a monopoly on legislation and so on and so forth. And the digitalization of our world, the transformation that AI and the digital realm bring is changing that. A lot of the services that are relevant for us as citizens are not only going more and more into the private sector, because that's not the point. It's something that has been happening for a good number of years. But the way platforms, digital platforms are starting to have a profound impact on many of the things that and many of the key services that were provided by the state, from medical services to education, to even to security. There comes a point in time where the state itself needs to put itself a question. If I am to stay relevant and if people are still to believe that it's worthwhile to come up and elect some officials every four years or every five years or whatever the democratic cycle in any democratic country may be, then I have to justify my existence. I have to justify other than the monopoly on legislating and norms, which one could say is very hard to challenge from either from an emergence of a new technology or from the role of the private sector. But still, again, if we put that aside, the state needs to still be able to say, I am relevant and I am actually part of the way the new world looks like. I'm part of the new way in which services in which professional, societal, personal issues are being addressed in my constituents. And for that, I'll simplify. It's a much broader discussion on this one, but I'll simplify to say that I think that the states themselves need to start thinking on how they can become themselves platform governments in a way. So they have to understand themselves what this digital revolution means, how they need to adapt themselves as states to this digital revolution and see how they can maintain their relevance in the way they exercise authority by transforming themselves the way they actually exercise that authority, by moving themselves online. The surface of it, it's the government issue and of course, moving a lot of the public services online and rendering them accessible online to citizens. But again, it's also a bit more philosophical, more strategic than that than the just physical availability of certain services online. It comes also certainly with a reorientation of strategic investments at the level of governments in terms of digital infrastructure, in terms of making available to every citizen the access that they need to perform such digital lives, either for their personal benefit or for their professional and for making sure that no one is left behind in having access to this new digital world. But all of this becomes a bit more of a responsibility of the state maybe than we were used to in the capital economies of the last couple of decades. The second reason why I believe that AI is having a profound impact on democracy is that it accelerates AI and generally the digital realm is accelerating at a pace that we've never seen before, tools that are undermining democracy. Fake news, misinformation at a pace that we've never seen before, the possibility to go and mingle into the electoral processes of anybody that you want to basically, either by state or non-state actors in a way that makes it also much easier to claim deniability than it was in the physical world. In the physical world, it's much harder to claim deniability, particularly if you're a state actor. 20, 30, 40 years ago, if you wanted to come and mess up with elections in, I don't know where, or with a referendum on Brexit, for example, well, you had to do it physically somewhat. You had to go and, I don't know, put your money physically somewhere, get involved in a campaign, somehow support someone in a more visible and, again, accountable fashion than the digital realities of today require. Today, and particularly with AI, accelerating again the impact of these tools and how a single piece of information or disinformation or fake news can be accelerated in a matter of hours to reach audiences that were absolutely impossible to reach in a physical context in the physical reality before. So all of that makes frontier technologies of today a major challenge, again, to how we can still maintain our model of democracy, untainted by interference that, again, is rendered now much more possible by these, by AI and by these technologies. Ethical issues. Another very important point, you've made a choice yourself in the introduction, AI is raising ethical questions that no other technology raised before. We can take examples left and right in almost every walk of life. The commission, if I am to know, with a very small bracket for my second part on the text itself, on the regulation, the commission has already identified, tried to identify four specific areas where AI will be prohibited, particularly precisely because it raises such profound ethical questions that they should be simply banned, prohibited from actually being developed and rolled out. But certainly, again, AI is raising some ethical questions that we've never had before. And now another reason why I consider AI of strategic or geo-strategic importance is our position in the world and how AI is becoming a centerpiece in foreign relations and in the way the geopolitics of the years to come are going to play out. I'll start with a transatlantic relationship because I believe that is absolutely fundamental for how we as Europeans, including in how we are embarking in this AI journey or this digital transformation journey, how we need to stay, that is my personal deep conviction, how we need to stay in tune with our transatlantic partner, the US, if we want to really make sure that our model of a democratic digital transformation is the model that remains sustainable and that will be followed by other like-minded partners around the world in contrast with other models that are being very aggressively promoted by, and I'll be very directly brought by the likes of China, Russia or others. So whether maybe one or two or three years ago, the digital file in the relation between the EU and the US meant taxing GAFA or things that were somewhat seen in that context of okay, how do we deal with antitrust or how do we deal with the impact of the big tech giants on our markets and in relation to our own companies so on and so forth. Now again, it has raised to a level of strategic importance and I think that is how we have to decode the announcements made both by the US side as well as by the US side since the election of Biden and since the, let's say the reopening re-engagement, the reinvigoration of the transatlantic route. We have called as Europeans, we have called as you know for a TTC, for a trade and technological council precisely for that reason because we also understood and with an AI instrument at the heart of it because we understood that this is a fundamental strategic piece of conversation that we need to have as part of our EU-US new agenda and the Americans themselves have called for an alliance of tech democracies and when you speak of an alliance of tech democracies, again these are not words that are just coming out of, I don't know, someone thinking late at night that it is nice and sexy to talk about the tech alliance. No, because also the US side considers that it is now fundamentally important that like-minded partners around the world, clearly with the EU-US being a fundamental alignment but there you have also Canada, you have Japan, you have South Korea, you have Australia, so all of these well you can say UK now because when we speak of EU we can't unfortunately consider UK as part of it, so that all of these again partners that still understand values in the same way, that still understand democracy in the same way, whatever differences they may have in terms of how they might calculate the economical implications of frontier technologies and who needs to be competitive with whom, putting that aside or going past that for the first time, going past that the issue of alignment in terms of how we set the rules of the digital world of tomorrow and the rules of the AI development of tomorrow becomes a strategic priority and one which we need to address together even with the difficulties of maybe different cultures in terms of how we regulate and different traditions and all that but it has to be part of the part of the effort that we make now jointly and again not a coincidence, there is great opening now on both sides to have a very quickly and a very solid, very applied, very pragmatic dialogue on artificial intelligence, on how we regulate artificial intelligence, I'm hearing for the first time congressmen and women speaking of their readiness to regulate and the fact that we regulated first just like we did with GDPR is no longer perceived as an arrogance of the Europeans who are quickly regulating or trying to impose a standard on the world, okay it doesn't mean that they will agree with how we did it and with everything that is in it but they recognize that it is time that we speak of some sort of a regulatory alignment here and as Aida chair I can tell you that I've been for the last six months in very intense contact with the AI caucus in the congress and very soon probably by the end of this month or in June at the latest we'll have a first kickoff meeting of a structured dialogue between Aida and the AI caucus that hopefully will be allowing us to have a very solid conversation in exchange on how we make this alignment and now I'll close with with few considerations on the regulation itself and then of course I'll let you guide me with your questions through the points of interest for you. I think the first thing that needs to be said is that it's great that it's there. The fact that we managed to feel this space and be the first ones to come forward with legislation on artificial intelligence past the principles and the guidelines and other form of loose instruments that had already been agreed in multilateral fora OECD and other context which was always a very good start in itself but now again the fact that we are the first ones to put on the table a piece of legislation is important. We have marked again the territory as EU and I think it's essential that we did, it's important that we did. I think there are some very good points in this text and they are there because of the fact that the commission got smart last year and did not rush as they had initially said they would legislate in the first 500 days. They listen to reason, they listen a lot to also us, we have made a great push in parliament to convince and give them the political alibi not to fulfill their promise of legislating in the first 100 days. We told them it's fine, we'll forgive you without sticking to that objective but don't rush before you understand exactly what you need to legislate. So the fact that the commission has started first with the white paper that it has embarked in this very broad consultation of last year listening to all stakeholders possible to then come arrives to a point where they were relatively certain as to what are exactly the points and how to make them in the legislation is a good process and again it is reflected in the way the text is built. The key requirement which we have pushed for a lot at least my political group renew which was to allow for differentiation which the commission is calling a risk-based approach to move away from blanket regulation from trying to come with one size fits all type of type of solutions but to actually take applications for what they mean and for the kind of results and outcomes that they produce to take also sectors not as a monolithical sector in other words meaning that oh if it's defense it means it's banned or if it's I don't know something else it means allow you know in every sector in every walk of life or economical domain there can be applications that are prohibited just as well as they can be applications that need no regulation at all and the fact that the commission has embraced this approach of differentiation and risk-based with several layers of risk several gradients from the ban is all the way to know to deregulation I think that's a very good thing. Another positive thing is the fact that it has allowed for adaptability in rules which was a great challenge which many raised how can you regulate something that will evolve so quickly in time by the time will be finished with the negotiations already AI would have looked a bit different so although it's not easy with the current rules in place under the treaties but the commission has found a way to allow for adaptation of the various conditions in the legislation by means of implementing acts and the annexes it has moved a lot to the annexes and it has done that deliberately so that it can adapt it can grow and tweak the norm as it evolves and as the technology evolves sorry my lights went off and also it has a specific chapter on sandboxing which also I think is very important because again it allows for companies to go into a safe environment where it can interact with regulators and make sure that what they what they develop is something that that fits with the rules now some of the negative in our stop I've already taken a lot of time some of the negatives I fear fragmentation what everyone has been calling for and not since now since basically the start of the first instruments on regulating the digital market was to make sure that we actually make good use of the scale of the EU market niche in time and that we arrive at that single digital market that we all claim we wish to have unfortunately what I don't see in here and in fact it's a it's a very worrisome pattern that I observe because if I if I start with a instrument of November last year with the digital governance act and then the DSA and then the DMA and now the AI and then there are a few more that are coming they all seem to repeat the same model where you have a set of European rules set out in these texts in these proposals in these regulations that will be norm equally applicable across the land but there's a lot left to national competence to national authority to regulate in terms of how it will actually be implemented in practice how it will be verified how the certification will be done how the sanctions will be applied and that's from my point of view brings a some a substantial risk of fragmentation we all know that the 27 of us have different cultures different administrative histories different ways of transposing these EU norms and if I am a small startup I don't know in the middle of the EU and I actually wish with my application to reach the potential of the entire EU market I'm going to have a hard time if I have 27 different ways in which the AI regulation was it was implemented if I have 27 different national authorities that are telling me whether my application is in a way or another way and if I have 27 different sanctions sanctions regimes so I wished and I still wish because I'm the process of negotiation has just started and again multiply that with with 506 because again in the in the governance act there is a set of national authorities in the dsa there is a set of national authorities in the dma there is a and and each of them are supposed to gather up in some sort of a EU governance body so we'll have four or five or six different governance bodies they're dealing with different pieces of what is supposed to be a single digital market it's not I think very savvy and that's something that we will need to try and see if we can correct it during the negotiations there are many more things to say about the text itself I'll stop here I've already taken more than half an hour sorry for that never tell a politician that that that I can have 35 minutes because I think 40 so I'm in your hands for questions thank you very much druggers not at all I think thank you for an excellent presentation and I think putting it in that strategic context there's lots of questions but I'd just like to ask you one one question is a very general one and in that kind of strategic context and the kind of human-centric and values-based approach are we you know in Europe as you say the 27 member states are we having that discussion or have we just suddenly jumped to the regulations and looked you know with a high risk low risk or that differentiation so are we having that discussion do you do you know I'd have to say it's the first time that I've heard that so well argued and presented as really not just something factual but a concern that we that we'd have to work through well I'll be brutally honest not enough and in fact again one of the reasons why I decided to embrace this particular topic was exactly out of my almost fear that no one seemed to be talking about this somehow all sleepwalking into into just the economical aspects and the industrial policy aspects or the consumer protection and privacy considerations of what the digital transformation means but no one was actually speaking in a joint up somewhat of a coherent coordinated fashion of the implications again for for democracy of the implications for for the organization of the states themselves for the strategic relations at the global level so and so forth or at least I wasn't connected to to where those conversations were taking place and when I arrived in in parliament because it's my first mandate in the European parliament when I arrived here and I started to ask colleagues listen where do you discuss these things they were all looking at me and saying are you kidding there's no place and in fact at the very start in the first week of the mandate I took advantage of we were discussing we were meeting in different configurations with with leaders because we're preparing for the for the discussion on the top jobs and in fact I spoke to some of the to some of the top political leaders at the EU and also at national level asking them listen don't you think it's it's time that at least in the European parliament we create a standing committee that actually discusses this sort of digital issues together there was I found that there was suddenly an audience for it but we didn't have the time to actually go through the motion of creating a standing committee which is quite a complicated bureaucratic affair in parliament in time and that is why afterwards I did not abandon the idea and then I pushed for the special committee on AI in the same package with a special committee on misinformation fake news and I was happy that at least we managed that because again now we have a place where apart from the standing committee that will look at the ethical issues the privacy issues the consumer protection issues the industrial issues whatever in the legislative committees we now have a place where we can actually bring all of these threads together and this is what we've been doing with AIDA for the last seven months since we started we had our first hearing in in October last year we are putting these topics these topics that are forcing in a way a merger of all of these implications into discussions and considerations that are looking a bit from further above at the implications of AI and that are connecting the dots we're still we're still doing it it's a learning process we are educating our members a lot as well in this exercise but again I feel that now the momentum is there and if I also look at some of the strategies that the member states have have produced on AI and that the processes that that they had behind the production of those strategies there are also quite a number of national parliaments that have created also themselves some special committees on AI and also had this sort of political deliberations as to as to what it means for societies economies and democracies again I think that now the critical mass is building up to start having these conversations great dragon syntax for your persistence and that and it's in ensuring that that would happen there's a lots of questions coming in so I'll go back I'll go to the audience and the first one is it goes to the EU-US relations what are the commonalities and differences between the EU and the US on the subject of regulating artificial intelligence will finding a common position and regulation be a major challenge and just finally do you have any sense of what the initial thoughts currently are in the US as regarding the US AI proposal so far well I'll tell you that I started off in my interaction with let's say my American counterparts with with the regulators on the other side of the Atlantic thinking that they'll probably consider us to be completely off mark or as I said earlier arrogant or or in a way not understanding how the digital industry works and to my surprise it wasn't the case at all in fact there are two things that are interesting that are happening I was also surprised that the big tech companies themselves have started to talk about the need for regulation which for me was a big surprise to hear Google, Apple, Amazon, even Facebook to a lesser extent I think Zuckerberg is still in Lullaland but all the other ones Microsoft very much understanding that there is an ethical a set of ethical issues that are being raised by the way these platforms develop and how they mean and what they mean now for our daily lives that they cannot simply handle themselves through self-regulation or through some sort of an internal mechanism for compliance or for ethical I don't know and they themselves I can tell you I've been talking with pretty much every major big tech company out there at the level of CEOs or presidents of boards or whatever and they all say listen regulate us which I think that two three four years ago would have been a complete a complete impossibility and I think they're also why am I saying it because I think they're also explains why also at the level of the policymakers in the U.S. there is now a different stand it's a different attitude they themselves are looking again at regulation they had a special commissioning themselves on AI which started from a focus on defense and security but very much broadened its perspective to pretty much every walk of life in economy and they've produced a report which I invited to go through which is a very interesting piece of reading which again shows how concerned also the U.S. Congress is as to the implications of AI and you'll be surprised to see how many commonalities you're asking of commonalities how many commonalities you'll find with what we say here in Europe the concerns we have on ethics on biases on on implications for on the whole explainability of technology all those things including implications on education and and the labor markets of tomorrow and the adaptability of of all of those are things that they are concerned with themselves and therefore again maybe they will take a different legislative route or normative routes simply because they have a different culture when it comes to that but they will be trying to regulate the same the same things or approximately the same things that's that's very interesting and we've another question related to the U.S. from Michael Benhamo and he's asking the question the U.S. intends to spend eight billion on AI the EU plans one billion according to the European Commission action plan how can Europe fill the gap will we use the recovery plan for AI yes that's a big it's a very good question it's a very big concern I have as well you know the you know the saying you have to put your money where your mouth is and unfortunately we're not doing that we're not matching the political rhetoric with the right level of ambition when it comes to spending there's there was a big discussion for the mff luckily for the recovery plan we have this this threshold of 20 percent which needs to be filled with digital investments now we will see how governments understand what a digital investment is and how much it will go into infrastructure not that that is not necessary that is important as well it's a precursor you can't you can't develop AI you can't expect uptake of AI if if infrastructure is not there so if it's infrastructure so be it but again it's important for governments to at least try to fit the 20 percent of the recovery fund for digital and as much as possible for innovation for research for rolling out from technology as much as possible it's also I think it will be a challenge for the commission to try to bridge what the different member states will be doing in terms of investments so that there is some sort of a coherent evolution and networking particularly for the research and innovation projects because again if we don't manage to to reap the benefits of the 27 member state market if we will be all be playing with our little toys inside our little countries because we are all small even if we're Germany we're still small in in this global competition then we will be missing missing the point so yes I don't think that we're investing enough with rrf and double also with some domestic government allocations apart from rrf and the raw governments which actually spending quite quite a lot of money on on AI so it's it's better than it used to be but not not really not not so no but is it your point again though there needs to be more kind of integration and and some kind of linkage between national strategies and the european strategy as many cross-border projects as possible particularly for again for the research and innovation for universities for all those that are doing that are embarking in in this creative part of digitalization and AI and this is where commission has to help in in enforcing a link up yeah well I suppose that point you're making AI is a global technology it's not a you know a european technology an american technology so you need that collaboration and you know you'd hope the universities will they will respond if they're given the funding and the structure because they are used to working together and i've a question from fredrick morrow from france and he's asking another area about defense what is your opinion about the link between AI and defense should the union have a very strict legislation with the risk of letting other powers like china russia and the us developing weapons that would overwhelm our own defenses uh a very very topical question um i'm i'm smiling because just this morning we had a shadows meeting shadows meeting for those that are less familiar with how the public works is where the reporters assigned by each political group for a particular file it's where they meet and they negotiate the the final product the report behind the piece of legislation or a report for a debate and so on and so forth and there is this eu nato report coming up in european parliament and i am the the shadow reporter for for renew on this on this file and in fact just this morning we are now approaching the the final stages of negotiations and we had quite a long discussion about whether we should have wording calling for a ban on uh basically autonomous weapons basically weapons system driven by by artificial intelligence and without any form of of uh human oversight or not any form but basically that can decide by themselves when to to to push the button let's put it this way and well i i can not not that i was paying the details i can't tell you the details of the negotiation itself exactly you you'll have to see that in the final version of the of the report i i think it will come up in uh by by mid june for the plenary in june and i think it's going to be very interesting read but uh all this to say that um there is i think a very solid majority here in the eu uh that believes that artificial intelligence deployed in the area of autonomous weapons is something that brings to higher risk uh to to let it pass uh of course there is the question which which uh you have asked yourself uh is that not giving a competitive advantage to those that would not have the same ethical dilemmas that we have uh China Russia or others and that may might as well go ahead and develop those and then leave us with a disadvantage tactically um and while it is a very point to make i also think that for again for the way we understand values and for the way we understand the principle of putting humans at the center of technological advancement and not letting fundamental decisions that are linked to human lives uh be taken without any form of human control i think we need to uphold this value i think it is it is for us again uh liberal democracies around the world hence the need for a strategic alliance of democracies the one that the us is calling for uh and if let's say our part of the world makes very clear uh how in which conditions and what are the ethical limits for developing these sort of weapon systems what those standards are uh i think that will be quite an important political and geopolitical statement which i still believe that we need to make with the risk that maybe china or russia or others may be deciding to to go and do something else yes and thanks dragoz we've questioned here from uh mark demsey and he asked why the uu didn't anticipate the immense power of private platforms that they've gained over the discourse to scores beyond borders including through hundreds of takeovers of platforms such as google facebook and other dominant players well because there wasn't we're still liberal democracies as i was saying and we're still liberal economies uh based on market rules and based on market rules um and and based on on again what we believe economies should look like uh there was a there was a limit as to what states uh could intervene and do uh in in a free market uh economy but um by the time and it's true that that uh we nevertheless allowed platforms to grow too big and by now everyone recognizes that uh yes you could say a bit too late uh and it is true uh but i would say better late than never uh so at least now we have the dsa at least now we have the dma which is meant to do precisely that to roll back some of the consolidation that these platforms have have achieved over time a bit unchecked yes it's true a bit unchecked and we tried to check it with with insufficient tools we we thought that we thought that antitrust tools would be sufficient uh the americans thought the same they thought that the way they dealt with microsoft 20 years ago was sufficient to also deal with google amazon or apple or facebook well the reality of today shows that it's not enough simply opening an antitrust investigation is not enough uh you need rules um and this is what now we do as europeans with the dsa and dma we are rolling back we are trying to unstructure to unbundle uh some of the some of the bundling that these companies have done to to achieve this massive uh footprint in our economies and uh again while it may be a bit too little too late but it's it's important that it's now it's now the tip thank you for that there's another question really about it as a profession it's from mary cleary she's the secretary general of the irish computer society she says thank you very much for your interesting presentation and she asked the question as it in general is a non-regulated profession what is your view on standards registration for it professionals who design and implement these applications well i think the time for that will come as well inevitably it's true that it in general and those embracing it as a professional as a career or developing things as a hobby they were the pioneers um there were the pioneers playing in in a field that was deregulated but it was new creativity and and initiative was free to roam the roam the uh the land and and grow in whatever direction it wanted to this is what the reality of the last two decades in terms of digital uh has been well now as i was saying earlier i won't repeat myself now that reality has reached the stage uh and we as policy makers have reached the stage where we are looking at this reality and saying hmm uh wait a minute uh now it's time for some rules and those rules will also have to apply to the it profession uh that will need to be structured somewhat i don't have a so don't take my words now as meaning anything because again it's it's i just think that that we need to start thinking about that as well because each of the different types of roles that an it guy or gal might might have has different implications it's one thing to be a developer of a certain type of application it's another thing to to to play with with other aspects of of it and or to play with hardware or so god knows what again i'm i'm not an it specialist at all i don't even know all of the things that that you guys do but again i think it's time to put some structure into that and i think that sort of predictability and and a better frame will also help the profession uh also in terms of how how it it it is in it's taken on by those interested in this profession and also how it is being uh is being rolled out thank you very much for that and two last questions lots of questions that i i hope i could get these in now and this is from Sophie Petit-Jean she's from a journalist from context i have a question regarding the work of the european parliament in terms of AI it seems again that there'll be a conflict of competencies between the involved committee to which committee should get the lead isn't it a bit frustrating to have such a conflict between a formal committee where when there's a special committee powerless she says i see you smiling though existing yes i think one of the again i'm new to this parliament so i'm not familiar with all this history but my understanding is that the most famous battles inside this this parliament are between Idre and Imko uh these are the two committees that also constantly fight over every digital file that arrives in this house um and i won't venture i won't tell what my personal opinion is as to as to which one will get it because my colleagues will kill me if i take sides uh luckily i don't have that luckily or unlikely uh my committee aida is not a legislative one so we are not going to deal with any piece of legislation because we are meant as i was saying earlier to pick up all of the threads and put them together in discussions that are not legislative that are more strategic but still i i do agree with you i do agree that this is a problem that is why as i was saying at the start of this parliament i thought that we need to have one standing committee on digital affairs not digital competencies or competencies on digital files in Idre, Imko, in Yuri, in Ribe and everywhere else and i still believe that this is the smart way to organize ourselves uh knowing also what will come um for the years to for the years that that that that will come so again i'm hoping that at least for the next parliament wisdom will be found to then regroup competencies on digital files in one standing committee and just one final question then from Maylis Campbell from Reuters and what are the next steps as regards adoption of the regulation and that's it a long a long long negotiation that's the next step and and the there are two challenges here the first challenge is well the text itself uh it's massive it has a lot of a lot of technical details that need to be grasped i can tell you looking only at two of the four definitions in the prohibited category i can tell you i anticipate that they'll be fighting for months as to actually what it means what is manipulative behavior oh i wish you good luck uh in in finding uh agreement between uh political groups and council as to what that means so again number one is the complexity of the text itself that will mean that there'll be a very complex and and difficult to know negotiation the second complexity in my view comes from the fact that again we would be stupid if we would not be looking all of us that will be working in different different parts of the big digital puzzle that we have right now on the table of the co-legislators if we don't look at each other while we evolve in the negotiations because it is not indifferent how you set up the rules in the DSA with the responsibility and the obligations for digital platforms and how you set up the rules in the AI uh and how you set up the rules in in the in the set of documents that will be regulating the regime of data in the EU whether industrial data or personal data or data owned by by state and so on so forth so one of the complexities in these negotiations that will come will be to to move in a in a policy and political coherent fashion with all of these negotiations uh in parallel and and trying to cross check and cross-fertilize these negotiations to make sure that again what what you decide in in one makes sense and is aligned with what you decide on the other it's never been done before this sort of this sort of negotiation so it's it's going to be very complex period ahead. Well unfortunately Dragos we've come to the end time has caught up with us so thank you very much for setting the scene and I think raising those kind of strategic issues about the future of Europe democracy where we're going how the state will run and I think the very interesting questions you raised there and got us certainly thinking about them and also about the complexity of what's going to happen next and the fact that although there's there's numerous committees I think a task to try and integrate as we will have to in Europe as well as member states but that the committees together are going to have to work coherently so that the policy that comes out doesn't have on a on a intended consequences in different areas so really thank you very much for your thoughtful presentation it was really excellent and we we will wish you well in your committee and see see what's happened and maybe when things get back to so-called normal we can welcome you to Dublin in person and well yes you you hope yeah absolutely no you were welcome and very much thanks for the invitation I love Dublin and with hopefully as we will be able to resume some normality in our lives if you'll help me I'll but we certainly when we want to find out what has happened and on your behalf on my behalf I'd like to thank the audience for their questions and participation and with great questions apologies to those we couldn't come to and also to thank our IIEA production team Lorcan Mullally and our researcher Seamus Allen the policy researcher for all the work that he did for this webinar and our next event is another one on Frontiers Technology it's on the European Blockchain Strategy which is another complex technology so that's on the 4th of June and we hope we'll see you all on that day so thank you very much again for Agus and we wish you all the very best and thanks bye now thank you