In recent years, my country has made important progress in the field of artificial intelligence, and some artificial intelligence products and technologies have achieved important breakthroughs. Important research areas include intelligent voice, computer vision, natural language processing, biometric recognition, etc., and the most important application areas include autonomous driving, intelligent manufacturing, smart home, smart finance, smart cities, smart energy, smart medical care, etc. It is estimated that the scale of my country's core artificial intelligence industry exceeds 400 billion yuan.

As a strategic information technology that is expected to lead future changes, artificial intelligence has achieved rapid development and widespread application, while also bringing many new problems and challenges such as security, privacy, and fairness. It is imperative to use the rule of law to regulate the orderly development of industries.

On September 5, my country's first special legislation on artificial intelligence industry - the "Regulations on the Promotion of Artificial Intelligence Industry in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations") was officially announced and will come into effect on November 1, 2022. The Regulations are problem-oriented, understand the difficulties and pain points of the development of the artificial intelligence industry in Shenzhen, and promote and standardize industrial development through institutional design. It also has strong demonstration significance for the whole country.

Relevant laws and regulations need to be improved

At present, there is no special legislation on the artificial intelligence industry at the national level. Since 2015, the country has successively promulgated a series of policies and laws and regulations aimed at strengthening the protection of issues such as data sharing, data security and personal privacy. The "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" released in 2017 proposed to formulate laws, regulations and ethical norms to promote the development of artificial intelligence. In 2021, the National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional Committee issued the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Ethical Norms", proposing to actively guide responsible artificial intelligence research and development and application activities to promote the healthy development of artificial intelligence.

According to Chen Chen, director of Baidu Legal Research Center, the current relevant laws and regulations on artificial intelligence have the following problems: First, there is a lack of specialized legislation for artificial intelligence, and the regulation of artificial intelligence is scattered in various special legislation, lacking systematicity and Consistency; second, data is the basis of artificial intelligence, and almost all current laws and regulations are based on restricting the use of data. How to effectively collect and utilize data, and encourage the openness and application of data is still blank; third, the business of artificial intelligence There are still few opportunities for practicing medicine, and there is a lack of guidance and support for application scenarios driven by laws and regulations; Fourth, artificial intelligence has extensive applications and practices in fields such as intelligent medical care and autonomous driving, and the methods and means of regulation of laws in these fields, There should be differences in intensity, and there is a lack of clear norms and guidance in different application areas; Fifth, there is a lack of clear governance mechanisms and division of responsibilities in terms of artificial intelligence governance and scientific supervision.

Therefore, as the first local regulation in the field of artificial intelligence in my country, the Regulations have unique innovative significance: the Regulations give full play to the driving role of application scenarios and strengthen application demonstration. It is clarified that Shenzhen state organs, organizations with functions of managing public affairs authorized by laws and regulations, as well as public enterprises and institutions should take the lead in using artificial intelligence products and services and give full play to the guiding and demonstration role. Promote the application of artificial intelligence technology in the administrative and judicial fields, and promote the integrated application of artificial intelligence in the fields of people's livelihood services, social governance, and economic development.

At the same time, the Regulations promote the orderly opening of artificial intelligence data resources. The Regulations require the government to build a public data resource system for the artificial intelligence industry, establish a public data sharing directory and sharing rules for the field of artificial intelligence application, and promote the classification, hierarchy and orderly opening of public data. Establish a public data and industry data standard system in the field of artificial intelligence application to promote the resourceization, assetization and capitalization of data elements.

In addition, the Regulations establish an artificial intelligence governance mechanism and establish a special artificial intelligence governance agency. The Regulations stipulate that the Shenzhen Municipal Government shall establish an artificial intelligence ethics committee to clarify the responsibilities of the artificial intelligence ethics committee, strengthen the overall normative and guidance of the ethics committee to coordinate artificial intelligence ethics, and at the same time clarify the bottom line of behavior and legal responsibilities.

Register and manage algorithms

The reporter noticed that the Regulations require the establishment of an open platform for computing power algorithms for industries. Encourage and support universities, research institutions, enterprises and other organizations to build artificial intelligence computing power infrastructure, open source development platforms and open source communities, use the National Supercomputing Shenzhen Center, Pengcheng Cloud Brain and other computing platforms to open up computing power resources and reduce Enterprise development costs, shorten development cycles, promote data sharing, algorithm aggregation and computing power opening, and cultivate a shared and collaborative open source governance ecosystem.

So, in response to public concerns, is the Regulations responding to the use of artificial intelligence to steal data or use algorithm technology to "kill old customers"? Chen Chen believes that the Regulations put forward requirements on the interpretability of algorithms and stipulates the behaviors that may not be engaged in. For example, Article 71 of the Regulations stipulates that for algorithms in the public decision-making field and commercial field involving public interests, organizations or individuals that provide artificial intelligence products and services should adopt methods that are conducive to public understanding to explain the algorithm; Article 72, Paragraph 5 of the Regulations stipulates that artificial intelligence research and application activities shall not be engaging in the use of algorithm technology to infringe on consumer rights and interests such as price discrimination or consumer fraud based on users' habits, preferences, and payment capabilities. These clauses can effectively restrict enterprises to adopt a more fair and just algorithm model when utilizing artificial intelligence algorithm technology.

But at the same time, many social problems often have strong characteristics of the times, develop very quickly, and have great social controversy. Chen Chen said that if such problems are restricted by legal provisions, they will be very rigid and are not conducive to the development of the industry. For example, "the delivery guy trapped in the algorithm" has caused heated discussion, but if the algorithm is not allowed to be used in one-size-fits-all manner, it may cause a large-scale unemployment of couriers or the service of consumers to be unable to be met. Therefore, using the Artificial Intelligence Ethics Committee to register and manage algorithms is the optimal balance between technological development and human ethics.

In addition, although the Regulations do not specifically target autonomous driving for the application of artificial intelligence in the new field of autonomous driving, which is more concerned by the public, although the Regulations do not specifically target autonomous driving, as an important application scenario of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving also applies to the general provisions of the Regulations.

Promote data interoperability, interconnection and open sharing

It is worth noting that the Regulations are an industrial promotion regulations, not a regulatory regulations, which have a great positive role in promoting the development of the industry. Secondly, the "Regulations on the Promotion of Artificial Intelligence Industry in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone" is a local regulation, and the special feature is the four words "Special Economic Zone", which reflects Shenzhen's exploration and innovation of the artificial intelligence industry by using the legislative power of pioneering the legislative power, and for the whole country It has strong demonstration significance.

Article 38 of the Regulations stipulates that organizations with the functions of managing public affairs authorized by state organs of this city, as well as public enterprises and institutions authorized by laws and regulations, should take the lead in using artificial intelligence products and services to promote the digitalization and intelligence of social management. Chen Chen said: "The Regulations require Shenzhen's state organs to use artificial intelligence products and services themselves, which creates a broad market for Shenzhen's artificial intelligence products and services. Baidu will use its advanced artificial intelligence technology and the depth of artificial intelligence. The learning platform continues to serve organizations and enterprises and institutions at all levels in Shenzhen, and promotes the construction of smart transportation, smart water conservancy, smart agriculture and industrial Internet."

In addition, data is the life of artificial intelligence, and without data, artificial intelligence cannot move forward. For a long time, there have been constant calls for data interoperability and open sharing, but the real implementation lacks the support of laws and regulations. For example, in the field of medical and health, the clinical scientific big data of drug development in my country has shown an exponential growth, but the use of these data still has many unreasonable restrictions and cannot be effectively shared and managed. Most of the medical data information is still in an "isolated state" , it is difficult to form agglomeration effect.

Article 32 of the Regulations stipulates that organizations and individuals engaged in artificial intelligence research and application are encouraged to rely on public data open platforms to develop artificial intelligence products and services, and promote the innovative application of public data in artificial intelligence scenarios. Article 33 stipulates that it will promote the circulation and utilization of data in the field of artificial intelligence and promote the resource utilization, assetization and capitalization of data elements. It can be seen from the provisions of the Regulations that the government encourages data integration, collection, development and utilization, which can stimulate the value of data elements and promote the development of the artificial intelligence industry while protecting personal privacy.

Author｜Legal Daily All-Media Reporter Zhang Wei Intern Reporter Liu Xin

Source｜Legal Daily

Editor｜Wang Fang, Chang Yu, Ding Zhaoru