Artificial Intelligence Ethics, governance and policy challenges. Report of a CEPS Task Force, February 2019

Like an unannounced guest, artificial intelligence (AI) has suddenly emerged from nerdy discussions in university labs and begun to infiltrate larger venues and policy circles around the globe. Everywhere, and particularly in Europe, the debate has been tainted by much noise and fear, as evidenced in the European Parliament’s resounding report on civil law rules for robotics, in which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is evoked on the opening page (European Parliament, 2016). At countless seminars, workshops and conferences, self-proclaimed “experts” voice concerns about robots taking our jobs, disrupting our social interactions, manipulating public opinion and political elections, and ultimately taking over the world by dismissing human beings, once and for all, as redundant and inefficient legacies of the past