Will artificial intelligence be smarter than humans? Where will autonomous driving take people? There has never been a technology that has caused such ethical concerns and even inexplicable fears as artificial intelligence. On April 8, the European Commission issued artificial intelligence ethics guidelines, proposing relevant conditions and norms.

"In the era of artificial intelligence, as well as big data, 5G, and the four new automotive modernizations, it is necessary to make advanced technologies better serve people and establish guidelines and regulations. This should be said to be a 'reassurance' for the research and development of technologies such as autonomous driving based on artificial intelligence and the development of the industry." On April 11, Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Association, expressed this view in an interview with a reporter from China Automobile News. He believes that with the guidelines, there will be less deviations and troubles. The guidelines also drive the rebalancing of the knowledge and behavior related to capital, market, and enterprises in the automotive industry.

Smart cars have “tracks”

The autonomous driving system is considered to be the highest goal for the development of intelligent automobiles. It integrates artificial intelligence, automatic control technology, information and communication technology, and modern sensing technology. It has high hopes for reducing traffic accidents, alleviating traffic congestion, reducing energy consumption, and protecting the environment. It is precisely because of these advantages that many countries in the world, especially developed countries, are actively formulating autonomous driving technology roadmaps and vigorously promoting the development of autonomous vehicles. In the industry, autonomous driving is considered an important fulcrum for the transformation and upgrading of the automotive industry, and is also a hot spot of competition among many companies today.

"Artificial intelligence that complies with ethical standards will bring a win-win situation and can become Europe's competitive advantage." Andrews Ansip, Vice President of the European Commission and Vice President of the EU Single Digital Market Strategy, stated the purpose of the EU's release of artificial intelligence ethics guidelines.

According to reports, the artificial intelligence ethics code issued by the European Union lists seven key conditions for "trustworthy artificial intelligence", namely human agency and supervisory capabilities, security, private data management, transparency, inclusiveness, social well-being, and accountability mechanisms to ensure that artificial intelligence is sufficiently safe and reliable. The European Union defines "artificial intelligence" as "systems that display intelligent behavior" that can analyze the environment and exercise a certain degree of autonomy to perform tasks.

Among them, "trustworthy artificial intelligence" has two necessary components: first, it should respect basic human rights, rules and regulations, core principles and values; second, it should be technically safe and reliable, and avoid unintentional harm caused by insufficient technology. For example, if artificial intelligence is used in the field of self-driving cars, the EU's guideline goal is to constrain the design of technical systems that will not be harmful or potentially harmful to consumers.

"The artificial intelligence ethics code issued by the European Union emphasizes 'trustworthy artificial intelligence', which will inevitably have an important impact on the research and development and application of a series of artificial intelligence vehicle technologies including autonomous driving." Liang Zheng, a professor at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University who has been paying attention to this field, said in an interview with a reporter from China Automotive News.

Developed country legislation

For autonomous driving supported by artificial intelligence, the technology has evolved rapidly in recent years, and the development momentum is rapid and eye-catching. The construction of relevant laws, regulations and systems has attracted great attention.

The prevailing international convention in the field of automobile driving is the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (hereinafter referred to as the "Convention"). The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe revised the Convention through amendments in March 2016. The new Convention stipulates that on the premise that the automatic driving system fully complies with the United Nations vehicle management regulations and the driver can manually choose to turn off the automatic driving system, the driver can hand over the driving responsibilities of the vehicle to the automatic driving system.

Countries in Europe and the United States are also continuing to pass legislation to establish the legal status of autonomous driving on the one hand, and to regulate related work on the other hand, thereby eliminating concerns from all walks of life about this new technology.

In 2017, the German Bundestag promulgated the Eighth Amendment to the Road Traffic Act. The bill clearly allows the "use according to regulations" of the automatic driving function of automobiles, clarifies the rights and obligations of using this function and the rules for the collection, storage, use and deletion of driving data, thus establishing a relatively complete rights and responsibilities system, which to a certain extent provides guarantees and regulations for the development of smart cars in Germany and removes legal obstacles.

In the United States, more than a dozen states (SARs) have promulgated and taken into effect dozens of regulations (departments) targeting autonomous vehicles.

The United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Finland, Sweden and other countries have also explored technological competition at the legislative level for the purpose of using smart cars to promote economic and social development, and have promulgated a number of laws and regulations on autonomous driving.

"The current autonomous driving technology, especially the core algorithm, is mainly the result of a large amount of data training. It has great limitations and is susceptible to interference. There are problems with its safety, interpretability, and trustworthiness. If the principles related to artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology are upgraded to laws and regulations, it will have a major impact on the development direction of this field and the pace of commercialization of autonomous driving technology." Liang Zheng believes.

The domestic system needs to be improved urgently

The technological progress and system construction of artificial intelligence and autonomous driving in foreign countries are almost synchronized and developing rapidly. The related situation in China has also attracted great attention.

"Artificial intelligence is an important technical support for the realization of autonomous driving. This is a consensus in the industry. The construction of foreign legislative systems has also forced my country to speed up relevant work." Cui Dongshu believes that, first of all, artificial intelligence is a strategic technology that leads a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation. Some countries have elevated artificial intelligence to a major national development strategy, which requires sufficient attention. Secondly, it should be noted that the application of artificial intelligence technology is uncertain and will bring new challenges in legal relations, moral ethics, social governance and other aspects. Therefore, it is very necessary to formulate rules, regulations, laws and regulations, clarify the direction of development, draw "red lines", and promote the healthy development of this industry along the right track. Furthermore, the self-driving vehicles developed by some companies in our country have now entered the road test stage, and road tests and highway tests are in progress in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and other places. It can be seen that the formulation of relevant domestic regulations and systems has become more urgent.

During the interview, the reporter learned that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has included some legislative projects closely related to artificial intelligence, such as the Digital Security Law, the Personal Information Protection Law, and the revision of the Science and Technology Progress Law, into the legislative plan of this session of the National People's Congress. With the advancement of work in this area, my country's autonomous driving will usher in a better development environment. "Include artificial intelligence legislation into urgent research projects, conduct in-depth investigations and demonstrations around relevant legal issues, strive to enable the innovative development of artificial intelligence, and strive to provide strong legal protection for the innovative development of artificial intelligence." During the two sessions of the National People's Congress in March this year, Zhang Yesui, spokesman for the second session of the 13th National People's Congress, publicly stated.

Within and outside the industry, the development of autonomous driving technology in artificial intelligence and 5G environments has attracted much attention. Domestic car companies, Internet companies, etc. have increased their efforts in technology research and development. However, autonomous driving also faces many problems in order to achieve "implementation", such as the lack and incompleteness of legislation, regulations and standards, which has led to innovators being "unafraid to go" and "not knowing how to go" in the process of technological development. During this year’s National Two Sessions, National People’s Congress representative Ma Huateng submitted the “Recommendations on Strengthening the Construction of Science and Technology Ethics and Practicing the Concept of Science and Technology for Good” submitted by the National People’s Congress, which proposed that ethical guidelines should be formulated at the national level for related new technologies such as artificial intelligence and autonomous driving to guide and standardize the application of new technologies.

"Autonomous driving legislation is very necessary, because the first prerequisite for autonomous driving technology to be accepted by the public and commercialized is to ensure personal safety." In Liang Zheng's view, system construction is of great significance, and foreign practices and experiences can be appropriately referenced to speed up the process.

In terms of safety, the first of the six guidelines for autonomous driving issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation is to ensure safety.

Legislation should also adhere to the principle of "prudent and inclusive". The second of the six guidelines of the US Department of Transportation for autonomous driving is "technology neutrality", that is, it does not interfere with the choice of technology and leaves it to the market.

Legislation and system construction should draw a "bottom line" and stipulate what cannot be done, leaving the rest to the free choice of the market and social entities.

"As an important symbol and specific application of the development of artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicle driving is to rebalance between technology and people themselves, between machines and human society, to find the integration point of harmonious coexistence, and to find the best path for harmonious travel. Institutional construction is the most fundamental means to control and adjust these relationships, so establishing rules and improving systems are extremely important, necessary and urgent matters." Cui Dongshu believes that this may be the biggest inspiration for us from the European Union's release of artificial intelligence ethics guidelines.