The Making of Trustworthy and Competitive Artificial Intelligence : A Critical Analysis of the Problem Representations of AI in the European Commission’s AI Policy
Artificial intelligence (AI), as a constantly developing technology that is difficult to define, strains a society not prepared for its impact. On the other hand, AI represents the future and comes with many opportunities. The European Commission has taken both views into account in its policy for AI, the European approach to AI. The European Commission’s AI policy, that introduces a regulation-based approach to AI as the first policy initiative in the world, offers a timely and intriguing topic of study.
This thesis critically examines how AI is represented as a problem in the European Commission’s policy over the course of a four-year time frame from 2018 to 2021. It uses a combined set of methods: qualitative content analysis together with Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach to inspect five selected European Commission’s policy documents. Four of these policy documents are communication papers with an additional white paper. With the help of qualitative content analysis, the main repetitive themes of AI challenges and opportunities are teased out. The WPR approach is used to examine the progression of the AI policy and analyze the problem representations found in policy. Research questions are the following: how has the European Commission’s policy on AI come about and how has AI been represented as a policy problem by the European Commission?
The thesis presents the formation of the AI policy by going through policy documents over the period of four years. Additionally, the thesis demonstrates how the Commission’s AI policy is one piece of the puzzle that is EU digital politics aiming for technological sovereignty. From the Commission’s problem representation of AI, the challenges and opportunities, it is possible to analyze the implicit representations of AI in policy. Although, the policy highlights trustworthiness and competitiveness through its regulatory actions there are other aspects present as well. AI has been represented in policy through eight perspectives, including safety and security, ethical, legal, competitiveness, AI leadership, socioeconomic, ecological, and education. All perspectives rationalize ways for AI to be embraced inside the European Union borders and participate in the shaping of how AI is to be approached. The analysis of each category shows that issues related to safety and security, ethical, legal, competitiveness, and AI leadership seem to stand out whereas socioeconomic, ecological, and education matters are not as strongly stressed. Overall, this thesis has demonstrated how AI has been represented as a problem in the European Commission’s policy
