Minority Report and EU AI Act

Those of you who watched a movie called ‘Minority Report’ (2002) can relate to this topic. That movie, based on a novel of 1956 by Philip K. Dick basically imagines a crime less society where in criminals are prevented from committing crimes ‘before’ they actually commit them. A set of three women in comatose status are used to know what people are thinking at any time and hence know if a particular person is thinking of committing a crime. Police then rush to prevent the crime before it results with disastrous consequences. I am not going into further nuances of the film but will leave you to judge the merits and demerits of such a system. This is a classic fight between authoritarianism and individual autonomy (free will)

The recently passed EU Act prohibits the use of AI for eight practices. Let us look at one now, that has relation to ‘Minority Report’

Article 5 (da) of the Act states the following

The following artificial intelligence practices shall be prohibited

The placing on the market, putting into service for this specific purpose, or use of an AI system for making risk assessments of natural persons in order to assess or predict the risk of a natural person to commit a criminal offence, based solely on the profiling of a natural person or on assessing their personality traits and characteristics; This prohibition shall not apply to AI systems used to support the human assessment of the involvement of a person in a criminal activity, which is already based on objective and verifiable facts directly linked to a criminal activity;

At this stage, I want to introduce the ‘scope’ of the Act as explained in Article 2 of the Act

‘This Regulation shall not apply to AI systems if and insofar placed on the market, put into service, or used with or without modification of such systems exclusively for military, defence or national security purposes, regardless of the type of entity carrying out those activities. ‘

It goes on to say

'This Regulation shall not apply to AI systems which are not placed on the market or put into service in the Union, where the output is used in the Union exclusively for military, defence, or national security purposes, regardless of the type of entity carrying out those activities.’

I do not see the reason for this split. As far as I can make out, the AI Act will not apply if the AI is being used by military or law enforcement

We also know that there are many software applications like DNA tracing, facial recognition etc., that are developed by private players but are used by law enforcement. There are efforts to control use of these software by private players but these efforts many times do not bear fruit

Let us split this and see whether actions under ‘Minority Report’ are banned by EU or not

·???????? The crime is not yet committed

·???????? The crime is already committed or is in the process of being committed

So, right away, we can see, the process in ‘Minority Report’ is prohibited by the EU AI Act (for commoners like you and me) but it is acceptable if it is used by law enforcement

Let me take you back to the movie. It is one person from ‘law enforcement’ who is likely to commit a crime and the ‘AI’ informs this to his superior

There are two issues here

·???????? Such software (most likely) will originate from commercial developers whose aim is to make money

·???????? There will (most likely) be no provision to establish a check and balance system amongst law enforcement for such type of AI Systems

Again, this is a classic fight between authoritarianism and individual autonomy (free will)!

My question here is however different

Can this clause be enforced by EU?