The Artificial Intelligence Implementation Challenge in the European Union and Spain

Introduction

The main developments in the regulations on Artificial Intelligence are based on a previous pillar of the EU integration, the accumulated experience in the construction of the digital single market, as a vital element to complete the construction of the analog single market and perfected in its digital aspect. The accelerated technological transformation that the European Union has undergone has meant accelerating the legislative development around the fields of information and communication technology that are changing the way in which we interact, perform our job functions, we communicate, and we propose lines of business, or we undertake trips to third countries.

A process of technological convergence has begun, after the adoption of the Lisbon strategy, which gradually eliminates the existing gaps between telecommunications, broadcasting, and Information Technology. The European Union should start its own process of construction of a solid capacity in Artificial Intelligence and as a matter of fact, the challenge of this paper is to reflect the construction, the main developments, and the future lines of transformation at the EU and Spanish level, that may, until today, have not been addressed. The methodology requires to read the main primary sources of the Artificial Intelligence documents published by the European Commission, obtain the main inputs from the political discussions done by the EU leaders, and compare with the literature that until today has been written in this topic. The originality of this paper shows, in an orderly manner, the progress and evolution of the Artificial Intelligence implemented in the European Union and Spain, based on solid plans but without the proper attention coming from Member states. Therefore, presents the plans to effectively carry out the biggest transformation in Europe with the implementation of solid systems of Artificial Intelligence.

The roots of this process can be observed at the European Council in Seville, on June 21 and 22, 2002, the e-Europe action plans were adopted, foreseeing the necessary digital impulse that the Union should create with the new millennium. The advances stem from the framework programs in research and development, which since 2004 focused on robotic innovation and would be extended in 2010, under the Durao Barroso Commission, which had a notable determination to focus greater efforts on a powerful agenda digital, overcoming insufficient private investment, boosting productivity, and conveying to Member States the need to modernize public services. It was imperative, in the eyes of the European Commission, to start putting Europe on the rails of the new and flourishing global information society, to fully develop its capabilities.

In the multiannual financial framework from 2014 to 2020, a total of 700 million euros were invested, under the co-financing of innovation and development programs, and in which the private sector completed with a level of investments of around 2,100 million euros. An amount that has made it easier for Europe to acquire remarkable importance in the field of robotics advances, but that did not lead to a take-off of Artificial Intelligence since it is not exclusively comparable to robotics. In the Horizon 2020 program, around 1,100 million euros were dedicated to investigate everything related to Artificial Intelligence and that could be used in space technology, health, in transport, or in the analysis and management of the so-called Big data (Hilderbrandt, 2020).

The Horizon 2020 program would be one of the first mechanisms used when implementing the general lines of the European Digital Agenda. From it, full effects were deployed with the election as the new president of the European Commission to the Luxembourgian, Jean Claude Juncker. In presenting his work plan to the European Parliament, on July 15, 2014, he stressed that a new beginning was necessary for Europe, prioritizing the articulation of the Digital Single Market, based on the previous experience assumed under the development of the analogical single market.

His mandate would strengthen one of the most relevant technological areas of the XXI century and facilitated that, after the arrival of the next Commission, chaired for the first time by a woman, under the German, Ursula von der Leyen. With it, a roadmap in favor of people and sustainability would be undertaken, that is, the social agenda and the environmental agenda, and on the other hand digitization and Artificial Intelligence. To this end, a Communication entitled “Shaping Europe's digital future” was adopted, which highlighted by the Commission the main challenges on which the Union should focus.