Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Harmful AI rules: Now brought to you by Europe & Co., Inc.

Harmful AI rules: Now brought to you by Europe & Co., Inc.

Companies’ standards experts will help shape the EU’s crucial rules for artificial intelligence.

Companies, many of them from outside Europe, will play a key role in deciding the details of the European Union’s planned rules for potentially dangerous artificial intelligence. But corporate influence over decisions that risk human rights has some activists worried.

The EU’s new law on artificial intelligence aims to protect people from harmful AI by cracking down against discriminatory, opaque and uncontrolled algorithms that are increasingly being used to make life-changing judgments on immigration, policing, social benefits and schooling.

The rules don’t target “normal kinds of products,” but aim to halt “potential violation of constitutional rights, whether it’s about the use of biometric surveillance, discrimination or your access to employment and education,” said Iverna McGowan, the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Europe. She criticizes entrusting “private-sector dominated” European standards groups to shape the final rules.

But that’s the way the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act is designed. It leans on industry forums, such as CEN-CENELEC and ETSI, to outline the technical instructions that ensure AI systems are trained on unbiased data and ultimately determine how much human oversight is needed and what needs to be done to prevent the software from going off-track.

France-based ETSI counts over 900 members, including tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms as well as European defense companies like Thales and Chinese telecoms equipment provider Huawei. The ETSI group coordinating AI work is led by executives from Japanese telecoms company NEC, China-based Huawei and U.S. chipmaker Intel.

The ETSI organization has what researchers in the United Kingdom have described as a “pay-to-play” model that gives members paying higher subscription fees more votes in meetings. That makeup can give an advantage to larger and richer corporations, and to global companies able to sign up many national chapters as distinct members. Huawei, for instance, is represented by six members (from Huawei Technologies to HUAWEI TECH. GmbH).

CEN-CENELEC includes industry standards experts from 34 European countries, including some from non-EU countries such as the U.K., Serbia and Turkey. The group ultimately represents thousands of EU and non-EU companies.

However, some say that non-EU company participation will also draw them into embracing European industrial standards, since companies building highly risky AI systems will have to evaluate their own compliance by following global industry standards.


Conflict of interest


Standards organizations set the rules that make products and services work. They draw up technical specifications to determine the quality and safety of everything from teddy bears and batteries to complicated machinery and even data transfers. European groups like CEN-CENELEC and ETSI have been crucial in getting telecom companies to agree on global shared standards for mobile networks and cybersecurity.

But using the industry’s bureaucrats to figure out how to bring ethics into AI is a step too far for some when companies’ primary aim is to grab some of a global AI market — estimated to be worth more than €1 trillion by 2029.

“AI is a hugely profitable endeavor that is reshaping multiple areas of society and is not going to be fixed by a piece of legislation that treats it like a toy, a radio or a piece of protective equipment,” said Michael Veale, an associate professor in digital rights and regulation at University College London.

Companies focus on getting “products to the market but the AI Act seeks to limit harms,” said Kris Shrishak, a technology fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

Engineers and technical experts in standards groups will likely struggle with ethical questions when they are tasked with translating an AI law into standards, Shrishak said. They will have to decide what constitutes fair and representative data sets for algorithms, the extent of documentation, transparency and human control for an AI program.

These decisions are critical. Flawed data at the heart of AI programs can reinforce social inequalities and prejudices and have far-reaching consequences like misdiagnosing diseases for minority racial groups and limiting job opportunities for women.
Ethical and geopolitical standards

Standards groups don’t see themselves as vessels of corporate influence. Indeed they see that their working methods show that they can reach “solutions that take all points of view into account,” according to Markus Mueck, Intel engineer and first vice chair of ETSI’s coordinating group on AI.

They’re not being asked “to start developing standards about ethics” but merely to implement them, said Constant Kohler, who manages the work on AI for CEN-CENELEC.

The European Commission said that it would have the last say in checking the standards drafted for the AI Act. It also wants European standards groups to involve human rights campaigners in the decision-making on harmful AI.

At the same time, standards groups are under pressure to overhaul how they work as geopolitical tensions brew over supply chains. The Commission is pushing standards organizations to limit the influence of large companies and reform their governance by 2022 to “fully represent the public interest.” Effectively, that means drafting more nongovernmental organizations and curbing the power of non-European companies.

Renew MEP Dragoș Tudorache, one of the European Parliament’s point persons on the AI rules, believes industry should continue to drive standard-setting, but wants rules to go a little further in banning companies controlled by some authoritarian regimes from industry standard-setting.

“Industry is not the enemy,” he said, but it now has “increased responsibility… in forging Europe’s digital path.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×