HRC57 - Interactive Dialogue with the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent

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HRC57 - Interactive Dialogue with the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent

03.10.2024 Press and information team of the Delegation to the UN in Geneva

UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

57^th session

Interactive Dialogue with the Working Group of
Experts on People of African Descent

3 October 2024

EU statement

Mr/Madam Chair,

The European Union thanks the Working Group for its report on the theme of "the use of digital technology including artificial intelligence and consequences on people of African descent".

Focusing on the topic of artificial intelligence, it is clear that while most AI systems pose limited to no risk and can contribute to solving many societal challenges, certain AI systems create risks that we must address to avoid unwanted outcomes.

For these reasons, the EU recently adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act. The aim of the Act is to foster trustworthy and human-centric AI in Europe and beyond by ensuring that AI systems are safe and respect human rights, democracy and the rule of law. This includes the fight against all forms of discrimination.

Particularly harmful practices such as social scoring of individuals; harmful manipulation and exploitation of vulnerabilities related to age, disability, or socio-economic circumstances; compiling facial recognition databases by untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage; and biometric categorisation systems classifying individuals according to certain protected characteristics such as race are being banned.With regard to generative AI and deepfakes, the Act explicitly requires labelling.

Lastly, we would like to highlight that the Council of Europe in Strasbourg is also working on this topic and has just opened the first ever global treaty on AI for signature, called the Framework Convention on artificial intelligence and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law (CETS No. 225). It was launchedon September 5^th.

Mr/Madam Chair, what is the view of the working group on the issue of social scoring by governments? Would you agree that this should be prohibited?

I thank you.