Who Decides When an AI System is High-Risk?
The Civil Liberties Union for Europe is raising the question of who holds authority to classify AI systems as high-risk, a designation that determines what legal protections and oversight requirements apply to those systems.
Why this matters: This is a classification problem with real consequences. Label an AI system high-risk and it faces serious scrutiny. Leave it unlabeled and it can operate with almost no accountability. The people most affected by automated decisions in hiring, benefits, policing, or credit rarely get a say in how those systems are categorized. If the companies building AI get to decide what counts as dangerous, that is not a safety framework. That is a permission slip.
Who should care: General readers · AI governance · Policy · Privacy officers
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