Oxford's Wachter pushes 'happiness' as a third EU AI KPI

Four researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute want European regulators to score AI projects by whether they make people happier, not just richer or safer. In a paper published in Royal Society Open Science, Professor Sandra Wachter and co-authors Brent Mittelstadt, Daria Onitiu and Netta Weinstein argue that "happiness" should sit alongside economic growth and risk mitigation as a third key performance indicator when the EU hands out AI subsidies, The Register reports.

The authors anchor the idea in three psychological factors from decades of wellbeing research: relatedness, competence and autonomy. Emotional chatbots, the authors contend, may undermine relatedness, while heavy AI reliance can erode competence and algorithmic influence can narrow autonomy. "Making technology less harmful is not the same as making it socially beneficial," the researchers write.

The money at stake is real. The EU has allocated €20 billion for AI gigafactories, with another €700 million flowing through GenAI4EU and the Digital Europe programme into Horizon research projects. "The public already pays for AI through subsidies, resources, and data, yet has little say over what it gets in return," Wachter says. Under her team's framework, "companies benefiting from public support would be expected to predict how their technologies will improve happiness and well-being, and be held accountable for delivering those benefits."