The US and EU agree to connect in order to improve AI safety and risk research

In a statement released Friday, the European Union and the United States said they want to work together more on artificial intelligence. The deal includes rules for AI safety and management, as well as a desire to work together on other tech issues, like creating standards for digital identities and putting pressure on platforms to protect human rights.

As we said on Wednesday, this is what came out of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council’s (TTC) sixth (and maybe last) meeting. The TTC has been meeting since 2021 to try to fix the problems that the Trump presidency caused between the US and Europe.

Since Donald Trump could win the U.S. presidential election later this year and return to the White House, it’s not clear how much the EU and US will work together on AI or any other strategic tech area in the near future.

But with the way politics are set up now across the Atlantic, the desire to work together more on a number of tech issues has grown. Both sides also want this message to be heard, which is why they released a joint statement today. This may also be an appeal to the voters of both sides to choose a program that works together instead of one that works against each other in the next election.

A Talk Between AI
The two leaders say in their joint statement that they “reaffirm our commitment to a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence… and to advancing safe, secure, and trustworthy AI technologies.” This is in a section about AI called “Advancing Transatlantic Leadership on Critical and Emerging Technologies.”

Another part of the statement says, “We encourage advanced AI developers in the United States and Europe to further the application of the Hiroshima Process International Code of Conduct for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems, which complements our respective governance and regulatory systems.” This refers to a set of risk-based suggestions that came out of G7 talks on AI last year.

At the sixth TTC meeting, the main thing that seems to have changed is that the European AI Office and the U.S. AI Safety Institute have agreed to start what they call “a dialogue.” There is a desire for AI institutions to work together more closely, with a focus on getting scientific information shared between AI research ecosystems.
Some of the things that are talked about here are benchmarks, possible risks, and future technological trends.

The two sides say, “This cooperation will help make progress with implementing the Joint Roadmap on Evaluation and Measurement Tools for Trustworthy AI and Risk Management. This is necessary to keep our new AI governance and regulatory systems as similar as possible and to work together on international and interoperable standards.”

As part of the statement, an updated version of a list of key AI terms is mentioned. These terms have been given “mutually accepted joint definitions” as a result of ongoing talks between stakeholders at the TTC.

A key part of the puzzle for standardizing AI will be coming to an agreement on what the terms mean.

The EU and the US have agreed on a third part of AI: they will work together to drive research into how to use machine learning technologies for good purposes, like improving healthcare, making farming more efficient, and fighting climate change, with a focus on sustainable development. A senior Commission official told reporters earlier this week that this part of the joint effort will focus on bringing AI advances to developing countries and the global south.

“As part of the Administrative Arrangement on Artificial Intelligence and Computing to Address Global Challenges for the Public Good,” the joint statement says, “we are advancing on the promise of AI for sustainable development in our bilateral relationship through joint research cooperation.” “Working groups made up of people from US science agencies and European Commission departments and agencies have made a lot of progress by setting important goals for deliverables in areas like energy, extreme weather, emergency response, and reconstruction.” We are also making good progress in agriculture and health care.

On Friday, an overview document on how people are working together to use AI for the public good was also released. As the document says, teams of experts from different fields in the EU and the US have met for more than 100 hours in the last six months to “discuss how to advance applications of AI in ongoing projects and workstreams.”

“The collaboration is making good progress in a number of areas related to problems such as improving energy efficiency, responding to emergencies, rebuilding cities, and predicting extreme weather and climate,” it says. “In the coming months, scientific experts and ecosystems in the EU and the US plan to continue to advance their collaboration and present new research around the world.” This will make AI powerful enough to solve problems around the world.

It is said in the joint statement that more global partners are wanted to help with collaboration in this area.

The EU and US say, “We will continue to look for ways to work together with our partners in the UK, Canada, and Germany in the AI for Development Donor Partnership to speed up and better align our foreign aid in Africa to help teachers, business owners, and regular people use the promise of AI.”

Both sides agree that Big Tech needs to take “information integrity” protection seriously when it comes to platforms, which is an area where the EU is enforcing new, broad laws like the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act.

The joint statement calls 2024 “a Pivotal Year for Democratic Resilience” because there will be so many elections around the world that year. There is a clear warning about the dangers of information made by AI. It says that both sides “share the concern that malicious use of AI applications, such as the creation of harmful ‘deepfakes,’ poses new risks, including to further the spread and targeting of foreign information manipulation and interference.”

It then talks about some of the ways that the EU and US are working together to improve platform governance. It ends with a call for platforms to do more to help researchers get access to data, especially for studying societal risks, which is something that the EU’s Digital Single Authority requires bigger platforms to do by law.

Concerning e-identity, the statement says that countries are still working together on standards. It also says, “The next phase of this project will focus on identifying potential use cases for transatlantic interoperability and cooperation with a view to enabling the cross-border use of digital identities and wallets.”

The statement also talks about working together on clean energy, quantum technology, and 6G.