Category: European Union

Why Europe needs a new vocabulary to talk about race

In this article for Algorithm Watch, Nicolas Kayser-Bril highlights an important issue facing Europe in the fight against racist technologies: we lack the words to talk about racism. He shows why Europeans need a new vocabulary and discourse to understand and discuss racist AI systems. For example, concepts such as ‘Racial Justice’ have no part in the EU’s anti-discrimination agenda and ‘ethnicity’ is not recognised as a proxy for race in a digital context. The lack of this vocabulary greatly harms our current ability to challenge and dismantle these systems and, crucially, the root of racism.

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Racist and classist predictive policing exists in Europe too

The enduring idea that technology will be able to solve many of the existing problems in society continues to permeate across governments. For the EUObserver, Fieke Jansen and Sarah Chander illustrate some of the problematic and harmful uses of ‘predictive’ algorithmic systems by states and public authorities across the UK and Europe.

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The right to repair our devices is also a social justice issue

Over the past couple of years, devices like our phones have become much harder to repair, and unauthorized repair often leads to a loss of warranty. This is partially driven by our manufactured need for devices that are slimmer and slicker, but is mostly an explicit strategy to make us throw away our old devices and have us buy new ones.

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Algorithmic discrimination in Europe : challenges and opportunities for gender equality and non-discrimination law.

This report investigates how algorithmic discrimination challenges the set of legal guarantees put in place in Europe to combat discrimination and ensure equal treatment. More specifically, it examines whether and how the current gender equality and non-discrimination legislative framework in place in the EU can adequately capture and redress algorithmic discrimination. It explores the gaps and weaknesses that emerge at both the EU and national levels from the interaction between, on the one hand, the specific types of discrimination that arise when algorithms are used in decision-making systems and, on the other, the particular material and personal scope of the existing legislative framework. This report also maps out the existing legal solutions, accompanying policy measures and good practice to address and redress algorithmic discrimination both at EU and national levels. Moreover, this report proposes its own integrated set of legal, knowledge-based and technological solutions to the problem of algorithmic discrimination.

By Janneke Gerards and Raphaële Xenidis for Publication Office of the European Union on March 10, 2021

Why EU needs to be wary that AI will increase racial profiling

This week the EU announces new regulations on artificial intelligence. It needs to set clear limits on the most harmful uses of AI, including predictive policing, biometric mass surveillance, and applications that exacerbate historic patterns of racist policing.

By Fieke Jansen and Sarah Chander for EUobserver on April 19, 2021

This is the EU’s chance to stop racism in artificial intelligence

As the European Commission prepares its legislative proposal on artificial intelligence, human rights groups are watching closely for clear rules to limit discriminatory AI. In practice, this means a ban on biometric mass surveillance practices and red lines (legal limits) to stop harmful uses of AI-powered technologies.

By Sarah Chander for European Digital Rights (EDRi) on March 16, 2021

Down with (discriminating) systems

As the EU formulates its response in its upcoming ‘Action Plan on Racism’, EDRi outlines why it must address structural racism in technology as part of upcoming legislation.

By Sarah Chander for European Digital Rights (EDRi) on September 2, 2020

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