THE DEVELOPMENT AND COMPLETION OF LAWS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN VIETNAM
Abstract: The development and completion of policies and laws on artificial intelligence in Vietnam is urgent, aiming to promote positive factors while minimizing negative impacts from the application of this technology.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, law on artificial intelligence
In recent years, with the rapid development of technology in general and artificial intelligence in particular, the need to perfect legal regulations on artificial intelligence has become an urgent matter.
The improvement of laws on artificial intelligence must come from the need to establish a legal corridor that allows artificial intelligence to generate more benefits for society, and ensure safer conditions for humans in the development and use of artificial intelligence.
1. Development of artificial intelligence: Opportunities and challenges
First of all, it is necessary to admit the fact that through the rapid development of the Technological Revolution and artificial intelligence, Vietnam is presented with new development scenarios with many opportunities and challenges. The opportunities and challenges are as follows:
- Firstly, in Vietnam, artificial intelligence has been gradually entering human life. Artificial intelligence is increasingly proving its important role in promoting socio-economic development and ensuring national security. Artificial intelligence has been affirming its breakthrough nature, generating new momentum for our country to enter a new era.
According to the assessment results in the Government AI Readiness Index report conducted by Oxford Insight in 2023, Vietnam ranked 59/193 countries in the world, ranked 5/10 in ASEAN in exploiting AI applications for operations and service, 1 rank higher in comparison to 2022.
- Secondly, besides the positive aspects, the development of artificial intelligence has also had negative impacts, affecting the legitimate and legal rights of people, such as privacy, personal data protection, employment...
Besides the great benefits, the development of artificial intelligence has also raised deep concerns about potential risks from ethical, social and legal aspects.
The deepest concern is the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence being used to commit illegal and criminal acts.
As a result, the development and completion of policies and laws on artificial intelligence in Vietnam is an urgent demand. Since the establishment of a legal corridor may lead to the breakthrough development of artificial intelligence, promote positive factors and minimize negative impacts from the application of this important technology.
- Thirdly, according to the report of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Vietnam is ranked 46th out of 132 countries and economies in the 2023 Global Innovation Index (2 ranks higher in comparison to 2022). Vietnam is also one of the seven middle-income countries that have made the most progress in innovation over the past decade.
However, frankly speaking, the current context is presenting more demands for state management on research, application and development of artificial intelligence. Many state management activities on intellectual property, especially the intellectual property in research and development of artificial intelligence, are facing the challenge of innovation in order to further improve the effectiveness of state management in this field.
2. Law on artificial intelligence: International experience
Artificial intelligence in Vietnam must be identified as responsible artificial intelligence, which requires studying the approaches of countries around the world to learn from their experience and from which point, making recommendations for Vietnam. Regulations on the legal mechanism for artificial intelligence governance, aiming to promote positive factors and minimize negative impacts from the application of artificial intelligence are stipulated in the following documents:
- Firstly, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution dated March 21, 2024 - the first global resolution on AI, calling countries to join hands in protecting human rights and personal data, and controlling potential risks from this technology.
- Secondly, the Executive Order of the President of the United States dated October 30, 2023 on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. This Executive Order emphasizes the need for responsible development of artificial intelligence, focusing on various areas such as personal data, nuclear, and biological.
- Thirdly, the Chinese Government Document dated 7-2023 stipulates "Temporary measures to manage artificial intelligence services".
- Fourthly, the European Union Act dated February 2024 on Artificial Intelligence, passed by the European Parliament. This is the first law in the world to comprehensively regulate issues related to artificial intelligence. The main objective of this law is to encourage the development of ethical and responsible artificial intelligence systems. According to this law, in the research and development of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to establish clear standards to ensure that artificial intelligence technologies respect fundamental rights and ethical principles. This law emphasizes the important role of transparency, responsibility and human oversight in the design and implementation of artificial intelligence.
- Fifthly, ASEAN Declaration on the theme “Application of Artificial Intelligence: Journey to the Future”, dated June 7, 2024.
* Recommendations for Vietnam
Vietnam cannot step aside from the trend of artificial intelligence. To identify responsible artificial intelligence, we need to study the approaches of typical countries in the world to learn from their experience and from which points, making policy implications for Vietnam.
Under the simultaneous pressure of developing artificial intelligence and ensuring safety for people researching and applying artificial intelligence products.
3. The Party’s policies and State laws on orientation and requirements for the development and completion of law on artificial intelligence
Under the simultaneous pressure of developing artificial intelligence and ensuring safety for people researching and applying artificial intelligence products.
3.1. The Party’s policies and State laws on artificial intelligence development
In order to meet the requirements for safe and sustainable development of artificial intelligence, our Party and State Management have issued a number of policies on research, application and development of artificial intelligence in recent time:
- On September 27, 2019, the Politburo issued Resolution No. 52-NQ/TW on a number of policies and strategies to proactively participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This resolution mentioned for the first time the concept of “artificial intelligence” and identified this as one of the areas requiring priority development policies.
- On April 17, 2020, the Government issued Resolution No. 50/NQ-CP, promulgating the Government's Action Program on the implementation of Resolution No. 52-NQ/TW, in which, the Ministry of Science and Technology is assigned to preside over the implementation of key national research programs for AI - one of the areas requiring priority for development.
- On January 26, 2021, the Prime Minister signed Decision No. 127/QD-TTg promulgating the National Strategy on Research, Development and Application of Artificial Intelligence to 2030. The National Strategy on Research, Development and Application of Artificial Intelligence to 2030 clearly states the requirement to perfect institutions in order to facilitate proactive participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digital transformation process and the development of artificial intelligence. Along with the requirement to develop artificial intelligence, the orientation for building and perfecting institutions is mainly identified as: Developing a system of legal documents and legal corridors related to artificial intelligence. Accordingly, it is necessary to design and perfect policies and laws in order to establish an open legal corridor, meeting the requirements of promoting research, development and application of artificial intelligence in life; Developing and applying artificial intelligence with people and businesses placed at the center, avoiding technology abuse and infringement of the rights and legitimate interests of organizations and individuals.
The development and completion of Vietnam's legal policies on artificial intelligence must ensure that artificial intelligence becomes an important technology field in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. By 2030, Vietnam aims to become a center for innovation, which develops solutions and applies artificial intelligence in the ASEAN region and the world. We must also proactively prevent and respond to minimize negative impacts, ensuring national defense, security, safety, social justice and sustainability of the country's development.
3.2. Requirements for perfecting the law on artificial intelligence
Legal regulations need to establish mechanisms in order to encourage human creativity and promote the development of artificial intelligence technology.
Like European and other countries, from a legal perspective, Vietnam needs to have a reasonable approach to artificial intelligence. Legal regulations in different fields including civil, criminal, intellectual property need to ensure that artificial intelligence products are developed to serve people. Artificial intelligence must be used safely, transparently, and with supervision. Artificial intelligence must also be traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly:
- Firstly, it is necessary to establish a legal framework in order to promote the development and application of artificial intelligence. That is:
1) The State encourages enterprises, organizations and individuals to develop, provide, deploy and use trustworthy and human-centered artificial intelligence systems.
2) The State encourages small and medium enterprises in providing artificial intelligence systems to participate in the testing mechanism of digital technology products and services.
- Secondly, for the civil laws and intellectual property laws
The key requirement for civil laws and intellectual property laws in this matter is resolving the issue of ownership of artificial intelligence products (the products are the combination of human creativity with machine interaction). The core issue is to balance the need for public access and the protection of intellectual property rights, ensuring material and spiritual benefits of artificial intelligence developers. This is also the legal protection of artificial intelligence products by copyright and patent laws.
Regarding the entity: The law needs to stipulate the owner of artificial intelligence products.
Which entity (human or artificial intelligence) shall be the owner of that product? According to the traditional approach, intellectual property law in the world and in Vietnam only protects intellectual property rights for original works, which means, the work must be created by humans. However, if this traditional approach is upheld, it can cause negative impacts on the development of artificial intelligence. Although it is created by machines, with the ability to self-learn and self-improve, artificial intelligence has "put aside" human intervention to be independent in making decisions and creating its own products without human intervention.
- Thirdly, regarding artificial intelligence and the issue of protecting privacy, personal information and personal data, respecting human rights and dignity:
a) When developing artificial intelligence systems related to humans, the law must pay special attention to (the requirements of) respecting human rights and dignity of the individuals involved. To a broadest extent possible, depending on the characteristics of the applied technology, developers need to take measures to ensure that they do not cause discrimination or unfairness due to bias (prejudice) in the data during the training of AI systems. Developers also need to take precautions in order to ensure that artificial intelligence systems do not violate Vietnam’s fundamentals on human values and social ethics. The most important fundamentals include patriotism, solidarity, self-reliance, loyalty, honesty, responsibility, discipline, and creativity.
b) The privacy referred to in this matter includes the right to privacy of space (peace in personal life), the right to privacy of information (personal data) and the confidentiality of communications.
c) Personal data protection is the activity of preventing, detecting, stopping and handling violations related to personal data according to the provisions of law.
Personal data protection is to establish a legal framework for artificial intelligence with a mechanism to balance technological development with personal information privacy protection.
- Fourthly, regarding the ethical issue in the development of artificial intelligence
The key point which required attention when developing legal policies on artificial intelligence is the fact that the advantages and power of artificial intelligence cause deep ethical concerns. Artificial intelligence algorithms may contain biases that violate social ethics, affecting the rights of users, especially the vulnerable; or the output of artificial intelligence may be intentionally distorted, making the decision-making of relevant subjects no longer accurate; or the self-improvement ability of artificial intelligence may surpass the original programming algorithm, allowing it to make decisions without human intervention and endanger users.
It is required to design the necessary legal frameworks. For example, ones are only allowed to collect necessary personal information for legitimate purposes, by legitimate means and with the consent of the individual whose information is collected;
- Fifthly, regarding the regulations on responsibilities in research, application and development of artificial intelligence:
1) The law regulating responsibilities in research, application and development of artificial intelligence must be prescribed specifically for different entities.
2) Responsibilities in research, application and development of artificial intelligence must be regulated to include administrative liabilities, civil liabilities and criminal liabilities.
3) Form and level of responsibility in research, application and development of artificial intelligence must be regulated specifically for different violations, the severity of violations and the level of risk presented by artificial intelligence products.
3.3. Regulations on prohibited artificial intelligence activities.
Prohibited artificial intelligence activities include the act of placing on the market, putting into use or using artificial intelligence systems in the following cases:
- Firstly, deploying techniques aimed at influencing an individual's behavior without the individual's awareness, manipulating or deceiving an individual to distort his/her behavior;
- Secondly, exploiting the vulnerabilities of individuals or groups of people due to age, disability, economic or social stance that seriously distort behavior and cause significant harm to that individual or group of people.
- Thirdly, using artificial intelligence to assess or classify individuals based on social behavior or inferred or predicted personal or personality traits that lead to one or both of the following scenarios:
a) Adverse treatment in a social context unrelated to the context in which the data were originally generated or collected;
b) Adverse harm to an individual or group of people that is unjustified or disproportionate to the social conduct or the seriousness of that conduct.
- Fourthly, using artificial intelligence to assess individual risk in order to identify or predict the risk that an individual will commit a criminal offence based solely on the profile or assessment of personality and characteristics of that individual, except for artificial intelligence systems used to support the direct assessments related to crime prevention and control activities under current legal regulations.
- Fifthly, placing on the market, putting into use artificial intelligence systems that generate or expand facial recognition databases through the collection of untargeted facial images from the Internet or CCTV footage.
- Sixthly, placing on the market, putting into use artificial intelligence systems that infer human emotions in the workplace and educational institutions, except for artificial intelligence systems used for medical and safety purposes.
- Seventhly, placing on the market, putting into use biometric classification artificial intelligence systems that classify individuals based on biometric data in order to infer sensitive personal data, except for labeling or filtering of legally collected biometric data sets.
Summary
Artificial intelligence governance must be considered as part of Vietnam's digital strategy in order to ensure better conditions for the development and use of this advanced technology.
With the rapid development of technology, regulations on artificial intelligence have become one of the key policy questions for legal researchers and legal policy makers in recent years. We must actively contribute to the establishment of a legal corridor in order to develop a human-centered approach to artificial intelligence, ensuring that people can benefit from new technologies that are developed and operated in accordance with the values and principles of the law-governed Socialist state of Vietnam.
By consistently developing and perfecting institutions to remove bottlenecks for the development of technologies, especially the cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, we can contribute to promoting the entering of a New Era - the Era of National Advancement.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have just presented to you some of the basic issues on the Law on Artificial Intelligence in Vietnam: Orientation and requirements for improvement. (Thank you for your listening).
References
(1) Nguyen Phu Trong: Some theoretical and practical issues on socialism and the path to socialism in Vietnam, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2022.
(2) To Lam: Some basic contents regarding the new era, the era of national advancement; strategic orientations to bring the country into the new era, the era of national advancement. (tapchicongsan.org.vn, 06:00, November 1, 2024)
(3) Documents of the 13th National Party Congress, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi. 2021, volume I.
(4) Eijas Ariffin (2018), https://theaseanpost.com/article/what-are-effect-automation-asean-workforce.
(5) Arianna Johnson, 2023. Source:
(6) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/analytics/assets/pwc-ai-analysis-sizing-the-prize-report.pdf(8)
(7) Resolution No. 23-NQ/TW, dated March 22, 2018, of the Politburo, on orientations for designing national industrial development policies to 2030, with a vision to 2045.
(8) Resolution No. 52-NQ/TW, dated September 27, 2019, of the Politburo, on a number of policies and strategies to proactively participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
(9) Resolution No. 50/NQ-CP, dated April 17, 2020, of the Government, promulgating the Government's Action Program to implement Resolution No. 52-NQ/TW, dated September 27, 2019, of the Politburo, on a number of policies and strategies to proactively participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
(10) Decision No. 127/QD-TTg promulgating the National Strategy on research, development and application of artificial intelligence to 2030.
(11) Conference Proceedings: “Law on Artificial Intelligence: International Experience and Implication for Vietnam”, Hanoi, May 2024.
(12) In 2022, Vietnam ranked 55/181 among the surveyed countries. In 2023, Vietnam ranked 59/193 among the surveyed countries.