draft EU AI Act meets energy system modeling
Robbie Morrison
Hi all
Some thoughts on the draft European Union Artificial Intelligence Act ("AI Act") which was proposed two years ago on 21 April 2021. Its official title is "Regulation COM/2021/206 final". Much of what follows is based on a presentation I attended last week under the Chatham House Rule — so I must necessarily be vague.
The European Commission would like this AI legislation to set the global standard — much like the GDPR has done.
An "AI system" is defined in Annex 1 such that linear programming‑based simulation modeling might not be covered — I say that because I read the term "optimization methods" to refer to techniques like least‑squares estimation and related data fitting techniques more generally.
There is also apparently an exception for outputs with the sole purpose of research and development — for which policy‑oriented energy system analysis would doubtless fall outside.
The current version of the draft act offers four levels of risk severity, working upwards. On level three is the use of AI for the identification of infrastructure. My guess is that some projects within this community — and particular those working in developing regions — will fall under this provision. Modelers will then probably need to register in an EU database and provide substantial data governance plans. And there is provision for penalties of €30 million in case you were planning on remaining under the radar!
There is also a draft Product Liability Directive that covers the misuse of AI under the law of civil wrongs — but I doubt if that will apply in this context.
I have no real sense of what these AI Act measures will mean in practice but they will surely influence the manner in which such work is funded and undertaken and the protections that modelers will need to put in place.
If the slides accompanying the aforementioned presentation are made public, I will provide a link to the relevant PDF.
To change topic somewhat, there is also concern that the proposed
EU Cyber
Resilience Act ("CRA") will adversely impact numerical
modeling projects. These worries are well debated within the open
source world and some significant entities — like the Free
Software Foundation Europe — are lobbying hard on behalf of
open source. The current carve out in the CRA is effectively
limited to amateur open source projects and many think this
threshold is inadequate and problematic.
sorry for the complexity, with best wishes, Robbie
-- Robbie Morrison Address: Schillerstrasse 85, 10627 Berlin, Germany Phone: +49.30.612-87617