The Impact of the EU AI Act on the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 – A Text Analysis

This article conducts an analysis on the content of the Artificial Intelligence Act which has recently been passed by the European Parliament and which is expected to be implemented during a two-year stepped transition period. Artificial Intelligence has been praised for significantly increasing the efficiency with which businesses, institutions, and countries as an extension, have been able to develop their sustainable development goal scores towards the United Nations’ 2030 ambitions, especially in implementing sustainable business development, urban development, renewable energy, healthcare, education and more. Contrary to these contributions, a large number of researchers and international organizations have signaled the necessity of ensuring the application of ethical and legal considerations during the development and usage of artificial intelligence and machine learning models through the use of data management, protection, and ethical modeling experts within organizations. The article thus seeks to highlight the areas of sustainable development most impacted by the introduction of the Artificial Intelligence Act, both negatively in slowing down innovation, and positively in ensuring the safe and ethical use of these technologies. The methodology of research used involves sentiment analysis using Python’s Natural Language Toolkit followed by keyword mapping to enable a targeted view into the most positive/negative pages of the act, the most highly mentioned sustainable goals, and the mapping between this sentiment and the mention count.