Congress creates the new Artificial Intelligence Supervision Agency, which will have sanctioning capacity

MADRID, 12 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Congress has promoted the creation of the new Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence, a body with its own legal personality that will be attached to the Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, and that will have inspection capacity and sanctioning.

This is stated in the amendment approved by Congress, to which Europa Press has had access, in the bill to promote the ecosystem of emerging companies, known as the 'Startup Law', which is being examined this Thursday before the Commission of Economic Affairs of the Lower House.

The amendment is already incorporated in the text, which will be put to a vote this Thursday, after being approved in the presentation phase as a transactional amendment by PSOE and United We Can, according to what parliamentary sources have informed Europa Press.

The new legal provision contemplates the creation of this agency "as a public body with public legal personality, its own assets, full capacity to act and the administrative, inspection and sanctioning powers attributed to it in application of national and European regulations in relation to the safe and reliable use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Among its objectives, the Congress marks the supervision of the start-up, use or commercialization of systems that include AI and, especially, those that may pose significant risks to health, safety and fundamental rights.

Also the awareness, dissemination and promotion of training, and the development and responsible, sustainable and reliable use of AI; the definition of advice and assistance mechanisms; collaboration and coordination with other national and supranational authorities for AI supervision; and the promotion of real test environments for AI systems to reinforce the protection of users.

Finally, Congress provides that legal assistance, consisting of advice and representation and defense in court by the Agency, corresponds to the State Lawyers integrated in the State Legal Service.

The creation of this agency originates from an agreement between the PSOE and United We Can and Más País-Equo, with which the government groups satisfied the demand of this group to supervise the algorithms, so its creation was contemplated in the General Budgets for 2022.

On October 4, the Government approved the criteria to determine the future headquarters of this body, with the forecast that it will be located outside of Madrid. Since then, a period has been opened for autonomous communities and local entities to submit their applications to host said headquarters and another three months for the Government to choose it.

For this agency, the Government will take into account that the application comes from an area with a high number of companies in the field of technology and, specifically, artificial intelligence.

Likewise, the Executive hopes that the new headquarters will provide infrastructure and equipment related to this field, as well as having the capacity to house talent in the fields of ethics, social sciences and law.