Open the pre-registration process for the participation of entities and experts in the Artificial Intelligence testing environment

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, through the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, has opened the Pre-registration for entities and experts interested To participate in the testing environment (sandbox) of the future European regulation on Artificial Intelligence that Spain is implementing with the European Commission.

Europe has been working for months on this new standard, the European AI Regulation, which will provide the European Union with a legislative framework to promote reliable, solid and ethical Artificial Intelligence, establishing obligations for suppliers and users based on the level of risk of use cases.

The Artificial Intelligence regulation is one of the priorities on the agenda of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The text is currently in the trialogue phase and the Spanish Presidency hopes that it can be closed and approved before the end of the year.

Test environment goals

The testing environment aims to bring the competent authorities closer to the companies that develop Artificial Intelligence to jointly define good practices that serve as a basis for the implementation of this European Artificial Intelligence regulation (Artificial Intelligence Act), and ensure that it can be applied in the expected time of two years.

As the ecosystem as a whole prepares for implementation, this pilot project led by Spain, and supported by the European Commission, is expected to generate good practice guidelines and guides that prepare and sensitize companies, especially SMEs and startups, to facilitate their implementation.

In this context, the first Artificial Intelligence testing environment aims to define possible ways to implement the requirements applicable to high-risk artificial intelligence systems of the future European regulation on artificial intelligence, including:

1. Safety components of regulated products (e.g. medical devices, machinery) that are subject to evaluation by third parties under relevant sectoral legislation.
2. Certain systems of IA (autonomous) in the following areas:

The initiative is expected to lead to the development of a report with good practices, lessons learned and technical implementation guides, based on evidence and practical experimentation. These deliverables may subsequently be used, as appropriate, by the European Commission for the development of the European Union guidelines and as input to the standardisation process to facilitate compliance with the regulation on IA on the part of enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

Interest pre-registration: test environment dynamics

To launch the testing environment, high-risk, general-purpose artificial intelligence systems as well as foundational models will be selected.

In addition, an Advisory Council of Experts will be created formed by professionals in the field of artificial intelligence, both from a technical and legal perspective, who will support and advise on the application of the requirements to the participants in the sandbox.

In order to know and motivate the interest of participation in the sandbox of IA And prior to the publication of the call, it is desired to gather the interest of the entities and professionals in two areas:

You can access the register of interest for the Advisory Council in this link, and to the registry of supplying entity in this one.

This registration does not imply prior preference or selection with respect to the call for applications as it is completely independent of the call.

This pre-registration will be available until October 31, 2023.