Compliance is an inevitable aspect of modern business, especially in the rapidly evolving field of AI. As companies navigate this complex landscape, the importance of staying ahead of regulatory requirements becomes increasingly apparent. The recent adoption of the EU AI Act marks a significant milestone, introducing the world’s first legislation focused on AI.
But what will it mean for businesses in the future, and does the precedent it sets present any challenges?
The EU AI Act: A New Era For AI Regulation
The EU AI Act, approved by the European Parliament, is set to transform the AI industry by introducing comprehensive regulations – similar to the GDPR, but specifically tailored for AI. This landmark legislation aims to establish a framework for the development and deployment of AI systems, ensuring they are trustworthy and aligned with ethical standards.
Some key highlights of the EU AI Act are:
The Act provides clear definitions for various types of AI systems, including ‘foundation models’ and ‘general-purpose AI systems’ (GPAI). This distinction is crucial as it determines the specific obligations developers must keep to.
AI systems are classified based on their risk levels: minimal/no-risk, limited risk, high risk, and unacceptable risk. Each category comes with its own set of compliance requirements, and the lower the classification, the lower the compliance requirements. Some of the requirements can include: conducting conformity assessments, ensuring robust data governance, and maintaining detailed documentation for up to ten years.
The Act prohibits the development of AI systems that pose an unacceptable level of risk, such as those used for biometric surveillance, predictive policing, and certain types of biometric categorization.
But What If You’re Not Developing AI?
You might be reading this thinking “But I run a BI development team, we don’t touch AI, why does this matter?” – a fair question. You might not be developing AI solutions (for now at least), but what you are doing is working with data that is sensitive and critical. Even if it’s anonymized so that your customers aren’t identifiable, the data itself is commercially sensitive – your company doesn’t want anyone else getting their hands on it. Plus, if anything does go awry then your BI analysts aren’t going to be able to do the work they need to, which really won’t go down well throughout the business when the data-led decisions people rely on can’t be taken.
For developers, understanding and complying with these regulations is essential. The risk-based approach the AI Act specifies for AI really isn’t a bad framework for development in general – certainly for managing data more safely and securely. Because that level of legislation is now in place for a technology that is going a million kilometers an hour already, it’s fair to assume that other technology may well face greater compliance requirements. If that does happen, will your business be ready?
We’re Your Partner In Compliance
At PlatformManager, we understand the challenges of navigating complex compliance landscapes. Our platform offers complete transparency around your development process, including testing and deployment – it’s a compliance officer’s dream to have such a clear view. Change tracking is the big hitter here and while it makes collaboration between devs so much more efficient, it also has the added benefit of giving a complete history of updates, rollouts, deployments – everything. That means when it comes to keeping your BI compliance tidy, you’ve got everything covered automatically.
No matter how you feel about compliance and whether the rules that get put in place go too far, or not far enough – there’s going to be a growing need for compliance throughout development, so you have to be ready for it. Solutions like PlatformManager take the burden of manual work and chasing down old info off your plate, so you can focus on the value-adding tasks and not just the things you’re legally required to do.
Ready to streamline your compliance efforts and ensure your BI development is aligned with the data rules and regs? Reach out to us today and discover how PlatformManager can help you navigate this ever-changing regulatory landscape.