Facial recognition of criminals are among applications for AI to be deployed by the new Belgian government after Vanessa Matz was sworn in on Monday as the first federal minister to be tasked with digitalisation, AI and privacy.
The former member of the centrist party Les Engagés in the French-speaking parliament in Belgium will have a broad portfolio which also includes oversight over public companies and the civil service.
The government plan specifically mentions use of AI tools by the law enforcement authorities and police.
A minister whose job is to promote AI and also promote Privacy - seems like a built-in conflict of interests.
Ok I misread that title, I thought there was going to be a Belgian robot AI church minister going after criminals
Didn’t the EU just made this illegal? Or what was the new AI bill about. Can’t find the article.
Unfortunately law enforcement is one of the many specific “exceptions” in the new EU bill, the bill is criticized for having many such loopholes for law enforcement and immigration control.
The new EU bill is definitely really important because having such a bill is wayyyy better than having no bill until much later, but I feel like this is going to backfire so much in the near future.
I don’t think it can backfire just because there’re rules. Backfire will be possible if a rule actually made it even more legit to use AI for this.
But it might end up changing nothing for some use cases.
And my understanding of EU bills is often that it will get reviewed and changed before it will go into voting again. In that way not only the proposer of the bill have something to say.
Still I agree with you - better than nothing and let’s hope it will get bulletproof.
