Though this happens in the shadow of the EU AI Act, the Council of Europe is also approaching a finishing line of negotiations. Its Convention on AI, which seeks to protect human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, is being discussed this week in Strasbourg at the pre-final plenary session. The final plenary is planned for mid-March.
Yet, shortly before concluding this international treaty on AI, there are worrying developments we need to stand up against. Negotiating states (including non-Council of Europe members, such as the US) discuss several options that would allow states to limit the applicability of the treaty to public authorities – i.e., to carve out exemptions for private companies. In addition and similar to the EU AI Act, they also foresee an exemption for national security, which would be out of scope of the Convention. Responding to all the calls for AI regulation by regulation that gives a free pass to private companies and security hardliners is not what effective protection of our rights looks like.
In a joint open letter, civil society now calls on negotiating states to make sure the AI Convention exempts neither private companies nor ’national security’ use cases. 130 signatories have joined the call including citizens, academics, experts in digital technologies, investors, CSOs from the global south and CSOs that have been observing the negotiations for years, including the Conference of INGOs at the Council of Europe (CINGO), Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP), AlgorithmWatch. ECNL represents CINGO in the negotiations.
This letter is addressed to all the negotiating Parties, and joins two similar concurring initiatives addressing the US government and the EU delegation.