The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

https://wolfhf.medium.com/the-eu-ai-act-is-coming-this-time-for-real-probably-df31ad8c451f

by FionnMc • 3 years ago

127 289 3 years ago

wolfhf.medium.com

gambiting• 3 years ago

EU AI Act, not EU Act

FionnMc2• 3 years ago

Edited, thanks!

endisneigh12• 3 years ago

The acceleration of the divergence of the EU from the United States with respect to cutting edge software will be a site to behold. One is neutering and the other is cultivating.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

it's not neutering, it's pest control

tenpies• 3 years ago

pest control

I believe the Chinese Communists tried a similar thing[1]. I know you're just being poetic, but let's hope history doesn't repeat.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

neximo644• 3 years ago

I'm assuming you're typing this with the comfort of some kind of blink or webkit based web browser, made by said pests

oblio3• 3 years ago

The jury's still out on whether software is an unalloyed good.

brookst2• 3 years ago

Straw man. Nobody would say that.

Is the jury still out on whether software does more good than harm?

stefan_• 3 years ago

Yes, that's exactly how it turned out with China who have been doing this much longer..

lm284692• 3 years ago

One is neutering and the other is cultivating

Now the question is: what are they neutering/cultivating.

It might very well end in a "why did we start putting lead in gas again?" / "we can spray kids with DDT clouds right?" x100 moment

bionhoward• 3 years ago

You could make the converse statement about thalidomide, which USA avoided while others suffered severe problems. Regulation isn’t a silver bullet, and it’s particularly challenging to regulate AI because bits flow faster than atoms

zeroonetwothree10• 3 years ago

DDT wasn’t banned for harming humans. Actually banning it was probably bad for humans overall because of the rise in malaria (but we opted to make that trade off for environmental reasons). You should probably pick a better example.

ChuckNorris892• 3 years ago

Because many of the US's so called cutting edge SW has mostly been privacy invasive data harvesting empires designed to serve ads, like Google and Meta, or regulation dodging apps like Uber and AirBnB, or monopolies engaging in anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior, like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. With that logic TikTok is also some fancy innovation. None of the FAANGMAULs have their hands clean. Same with scummy companies like Cambridge-Analytica.

Honest SW innovations that don't aid in monetizing your eye-ball time to make you buys shit, or manipulating your emotions into making you feel insecure, or swaying your vote, don't make nearly as much money as what big-tech does.

Same as stopping food manufacturers from putting arsenic and lead in our food, or the auto industry from making only fuel inefficient air poisoning shitboxes, or big-tobacco who killed more people than the Nazis, the tech industry also needs regulations to protect the consumers, and honestly, it's long overdue and yet people on HN don't want this because they feel like this will stop them from becoming the next Zuckerberg.

criley2• 3 years ago

You can extrapolate this opinion all the way to "the only moral human existence is de-industrialization and return to hunter/gatherer lifestyle, and reducing humanity from billions to a million or less".

You drew the line at software and automobiles, but it's not hard (and not a slippery slope) to authentically draw the line much further. All of civilization is bad for the planet and for us as well. Bread was a mistake.

andrepd• 3 years ago

This hits the nail on the head. We have talent and we have tools, but the current market incentives lead to these being used to develop things that are often actively negative for people. We need democratic regulation to make it so that the incentives favour meaningful innovation, not just mindless data-harvesting mental health-destroying apps.

zeroonetwothree10• 3 years ago

Why is it that every time someone makes a poorly reasoned argument steeped in emotion there are Nazis involved?

simion3142• 3 years ago

AFAIK in USA the AI stuff is still in limbo, Microsoft and Open AI will have to defend themselves in court, the result could be worse then what EU is preparing depending on your alignment.

I prefer this shit is clarified so everyone knows what is legal and not, and not have only the big corporations do the illegal stuff and apologize later.

hhh• 3 years ago

It’s not illegal though. That’s the point, is it not?

can16358p• 3 years ago

Same for GDPR.

Not a surprise all big tech is in US. If EU wants to play this card, US will get even stronger at keeping tech talent.

(I reside neither in the US or EU)

smarx0079• 3 years ago

I didn't see any effect from GDPR on tech talent migration. Any source on this?!

hef1989816• 3 years ago

Reducing everything, technology, economy and society, to software tech is such a pseudo-SV bubble thing, it is getting boring by now.

icepat2• 3 years ago

US will get even stronger at keeping tech talent

Not necessarily the case. There's many reasons someone would leave the US (or North America in general) for the EU/EEA. The US is becoming less attractive to some given the current political weirdness. There's plenty of interesting work to be done in the EU and EEA that's not "hindered" by GDPR, and many developers who relocate to the EEA actually _like_ GDPR, and regulation aimed towards protecting individual rights. That, at least, is the case for me. Having had the opportunity to relocate anywhere, I ultimately picked the EEA.

aqme288• 3 years ago

What about these regulations is neutering? They sound pretty reasonable I thought.

suction• 3 years ago

As a EU citizen, I can't even begin to explain to you how willing I am to trade in possibly not having cutting edge software for the higher living standards and cultural superiority of the EU.

AndrewKemendo5• 3 years ago

One actively encourages corporations to use the population as test subjects for any psychopathic idea that gets enough money backing it

The other is Europe

zeroonetwothree10• 3 years ago

How many of those “psychopathic ideas” do Europeans end up benefiting from once they mature?

roenxi2• 3 years ago

In theory I probably do agree with the bill as presented in the article, there are 2 reservations that should be bought up.

Firstly, the EU has a history of crippling their native tech industry to the general detriment of the EU. It is quite possible that this will end up being one more nail in the coffin.

Secondly, they're fighting economics on this one. AI seems to be cheap and accessible. In practice controlling the things that this article discusses is probably going to be impossible. It is like banning communism or nazi-ism - we'd do it if it was possible. It isn't. Attempts to ban the idea just make the whole situation worse. It is well nigh impossible to ban modes of thinking, and AI appears to be one of those.

umanwizard• 3 years ago

Nazism is in fact banned in many European countries.

galleywest200• 3 years ago

That may be true, but those countries still see the "parades" by these groups. Its "banned" but not gone.

dandellion• 3 years ago

Usually what they have are bans to the display of nazi symbolism, or holocaust denial and things like that. Banning something intangible like an ideology is not very feasible, it's usually more about minimising expressions and influence.

TheFattestNinja• 3 years ago

(many EU countries have laws that ban Nazism and its derivatives btw. They are not working flawlessly everywhere but they are there and do "some" effect).

roenxi2• 3 years ago

And yet they have about the same amount of trouble with Nazis as ... more or less every other country in the world. Very mysterious.

Silverback_VII2• 3 years ago

the EU has a history of crippling their native tech industry to the general detriment of the EU. It is quite possible that this will end up being one more nail in the coffin.

The primary factor is brain drain. As many experts in geopolitics suggest, the European Union, in collaboration with Russia, could potentially rival, if not surpass, the United States in terms of power. However, it appears they are content to be pawns on the larger chessboard.

bjornsing• 3 years ago

EU and Putin together would be unstoppable…?

pelorat• 3 years ago

Russia has absolutely nothing to offer the EU, unlike Ukraine.

wnkrshm• 3 years ago

The EU is more in line with China on this one, I'm all for letting other societies try this cultural nuclear weapon on themselves first. See what sticks.

I feel that's the way things have been going culturally/economically in France/Germany: Look at the world (usually the US but now also China more), see what is useful/competitive, adopt it in moderation. So this stance is extremely in line with the usual approach, in my opinion.

bitL3• 3 years ago

France's industrial might is going down quickly and Germany without cheap resources is losing against China that copied most of its tech. Moreover, China is already outcompeting US in the AI albeit focusing on population control models. EU will become an open air museum for rich travellers.

m00dy• 3 years ago

Invoker here,

welcome to my network, it is decentralised and permissionless.

lionkor• 3 years ago

Is this not an announcement of an announcement?

FionnMc2• 3 years ago

The act isn't ratified, and probably won't be for some time. The attached link explains that yesterday the act passed the first set of votes in the EU, which formally starts it on the path to being law. The article also describes some of the recent changes to the wording of the law.

decide1000• 3 years ago

I always feel that the EU protects the people, while others seem to care about profits only.

lopis• 3 years ago

Just read through the comments on this thread. Most people only care that EU "fall behind" the US, no matter the societal cost.

nologic013• 3 years ago

There is no reason that EU should "fall behind". The danger with digital tech has almost nothing to do with the capabilities and features of the technology (well if its a nuclear bomb its features are very specific) and has everything to do with who controls it and why.

The implication that there is only one way to organize control of AI tech is patently false. We already know that you can have at least i) a state controlled system (China) and ii) an oligopolistic corporate controlled system (US). There are many other plausible ways and the EU must simply create the conditions for these to develop.

Legislation that has real teeth and vision can do this. This is possible even within existing corporate and monetary systems. Even the (controversial) Friedman doctrine about corporation's sole aim is seeking profit is that they must operate with the moral and legal sandbox that society creates.

Lionga• 3 years ago

That is exactly what they want you to feel about them.

zeroonetwothree10• 3 years ago

As a general rule no one in the real world is “good” or “evil”. Everyone is acting for their own quasi-selfish and quasi-ethical reasons. Governments aren’t exclusively the “good guys” looking out to “protect people” any more than they are exclusively the “bad guys” exploiting people for corrupt gains. Corporations aren’t exclusively the “bad guys” seeking profit regardless of the consequences any more than they are exclusively the “good guys” looking to expand consumer welfare with innovation. These are just stories people in power tell to manipulate you. The truth is always in the middle.

hackeraccount• 3 years ago

The people writing these regulations don't know what the problems of the future are. The problems of the present are tricky because every problem has a constituency (if it didn't it wouldn't be a problem.).

The EU is trying to get around this by acting quickly before constituencies can develop. This will make no one happy - it's like my wife telling me that a car's going to hit me if I walk out the front door so she's locking me inside. All I'll know about is that I can't go for a walk. I might hear that the neighbor got hit by a car but I'll also hear that they get to go for walks so to the degree the strategy is successful it's also to the degree that it fails.

smarx0079• 3 years ago

Did you actually read the proposed text of the AI act? I certainly want more oversight over a medical startup or airplane manufacturer doing AI in the essential system components than otherwise. I think adding a high-risk category is a brilliant move.

jiggywiggy3• 3 years ago

The problem with this type of regulation is that you need to add huge amount of vagueness in the law to be future proof. Leading to huge amounts of uncertainty for companies, unnecessary red tape and higher legal fees.

As well as giving the power to a judge to punish companies if the public sentiment goes negative.

eimrine3• 3 years ago

Did you actually read the proposed text of the AI act?

Are these 140 pages [1] the proposed text?

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/plmrep/COM...

fstokesman• 3 years ago

...remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces, biometric categorisation systems (e.g. categorizing by gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, political orientation) and the use of AI for predictive policing.
AI systems which can influence voters in political campaigns and by use of suggestion systems on very large platforms...
New transparency and risk assessment requirements for providers of (generative) foundation models like GTP.
Clarified exemptions for research.

Putting these kinds of restrictions in place is absolutely a good thing. While they might not get everything right, this is a step in the right direction. Our laws and understanding as a society has been lagging behind technological development for decades now. That fact has enabled a large amount of exploitation to take place, which has (in the last decade especially) had a large hand in massively undermining our democracies.

logicchains4• 3 years ago

New transparency and risk assessment requirements for providers of (generative) foundation models like GTP

This is absurd. For a relatively small sum in the grand scheme of things, I could rent a few A100s, download a free dataset and train a model like LLaMA 30B, which is comparable to GPT3 (and indeed there already are such efforts popping up). Such a law could potentially make it illegal to upload such a thing if you live in the EU without going through a potentially expensive and bureaucratic process. It will completely stifle AI development the same way requiring people to going through a bunch of paperwork to upload a new library would stifle web development.

PurpleRamen2• 3 years ago

Laws can change, but if hard damage is done, there is usually nothing you can do about.

AI at the moment is moving fast and unreasonable, we already have first waves of victims. Putting a lid on it, and slowing it down seems reasonable, even if it won't be a perfect solution. Interesting part is, this is pretty similar to the situation in 2020, when the pandemia started. Nobody knew exactly what's coming and to navigate it, but everyone tried their best to survive what everyone saw unfolding on global scale.

kumi111• 3 years ago

Honestly, until it doesn't have victims it's just a good thing. About Pandemia, it wasn't uncertain, as it was clear threat, driven by survivability.

SiempreViernes• 3 years ago

The "self driving" cars have already killed several people, and nobody can object those aren't sold as "modern AI systems" by the companies that produce them.

I guess you meant to say something like "our first wave" rather than "no first wave"?

carschno• 3 years ago

every problem [in the present] has a constituency

The internet as a way of distribution is not exactly new, plenty of legislations on various levels have been dealing with that fact for a while, for instance GDPR. "The people writing these regulations" cannot predict the future indeed, but that is obvious. It should not serve as an excuse for doing nothing, though.

dhfbshfbu4u32• 3 years ago

They could've released this at any point over the last few years, then worked together with industry to refine the conditions. Instead, they waited too long and now it's going to be a regulatory mess. The big winners here will be the lawyers.

smarx0079• 3 years ago

What? Optinions from public bodies on the first drafts started coming in the summer of 2021 [1].

[1] https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/documents/

themitigating• 3 years ago

Do people also win or can only one party win?

dhfbshfbu4u32• 3 years ago

What are the people “winning” in this case?

golemotron2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure the EU is powerful enough to have their way on AI, USB-C, GDPR and a handful of other things. With a population aging faster than the US's it seems like they are spiraling into irrelevance. It could be a market served only by corporations that are willing prop up old tech.

scrollaway• 3 years ago

“The eu is spiralling into irrelevance” is up there with “the internet is a fad” and “ai is useless” in the list of absurd sentences to say out loud so nobody takes you seriously ever again.

golemotron2• 3 years ago

Get back to me in 20 years.

nologic013• 3 years ago

What the EU is doing is not working.

The legislative effort is real, well intentioned, and groundbreaking. It reflects democratically the wishes of half-a-billion people that include some of the fairest and most sensible countries on the planet. So ignore the hallucinating tech bros. EU legislation is certainly in the direction of what a good digital society looks like.

But there is no response on the ground. From the tech makers. Remember the timeless Buckminster Fuller quote: you need to make a new model that makes the old model obsolete. Why aren't there any actors taking the clear legislative signals at heart to create the new digital model?

Here are some hypotheses / flow chart:

* there are no such actors. too much focus on luxury goods, not much on tech. mass migration of talent to the US has created a desert.

* there are actors but they don't get funded to act. If that is the case, we need to ask: there are gazillions of euros rotting, so why is this not happening? Possible causes:

  \* financiers don't actually buy the legislative agenda. they think it will be watered down / defanged by the FAANGS

  \* financiers belong to a group that doesn't actually *like* this legislative agenda (they bank on surveillance capitalism and the like for guaranteed returns)

Whatever the fundamental challenges and first causes, unless there is bottom-up buildup of alternative approaches the top-down agenda will eventually fail.

smarx0079• 3 years ago

Well, GDPR seems to be working all right. Care to share any facts in support of your statements? AI Act's required audits by TÜV and like (somewhat similar to UL in North America) are going to have pretty straighforward "response on the ground".

nologic013• 3 years ago

you seem to imply that enforcing legislation means its "working". this is obviously a pre-requisite. legislation that is not enforced is a joke.

but as clearly stated in my comment, this is fighting the old model, not building a new one.

wongarsu2• 3 years ago

In general I find the EU AI act quite reasonable. There are a couple AI uses that will be prohibited (most mentioned by the article, mostly manipulating people or dystopian government stuff). But imho the meat of the act is in categorizing many use cases as "High Risk", which comes with a list of requirements. Things like putting some effort in thinking about risks, into your training data, understanding biases, having documentation and logging, options for manual intervention etc. Most of it wouldn't be out of place in a best-practices guide for deploying AI models (even though obviously most of it is extremely high level)

konschubert10• 3 years ago

The effect is going to be that all the innovation happens elsewhere, big AI companies will develop outside Europe.

And Europeans will only get to benefit as consumers, not as makers of AI.

And the EU will take that as a reason to regulate even harder and then also somehow end up giving a bunch of money to its telcos.

EDIT:

My point is that regulation doesn’t just prevent “bad products”. The compliance overhead also prevents good products.

That being said, I agree that there are certain decisions and actions that always should require a human appeals process

gumballindie11• 3 years ago

I am pretty sure that regardless of where you are if you sell a product in the eu that violates eu law you will be fined. Furthermore you may be banned from selling in the eu all together. Meaning legit ai companies in the eu will flourish while ai companies not following the rules will miss out on the richest market.

So in effect the eu is protecting it’s citizens work from theft and companies from unethical competition.

ElevenLathe• 3 years ago

...and then also somehow end up giving a bunch of money to its telcos.

A funny but probably true prediction. Brussels loves handing money to PTTs the way the US Congress loves handing it out to Raytheon.

PoignardAzur• 3 years ago

The effect is going to be that all the innovation happens elsewhere, big AI companies will develop outside Europe.

Why though?

Like, most of the requirements listed in the AI act seem extremely reasonable and low-overhead, if not seriously meek. Given the immense budgets AI labs can call upon, why would "having to fill a form that says you made sure the AI wasn't racist" be a disqualifying factor?

Taywee11• 3 years ago

Yeah, like food safety regulations, other places still won't abide. It's not like "other places still will allow abuse of their citizens" is a great argument for us to as well.

Safety regulations exist in every major industry, and sometimes it slows some progress for the sake of individuals. This isn't a bad thing.

AndyMcConachie• 3 years ago

Fine. Promoting innovation as an ideologiy has become camouflage for mass exploitation. Most 'innovation' that happens in SV is either advertising nonsense or so new trick to avoid labor laws.

I've lived in both the USA and The Netherlands and I now live in The Netherlands. I recently had to renew my Dutch driver's license and the entire process so painless and quick. Compared to my experiences doing the same thing in both Virginia and California it was a lovely breeze. That's progress. That's innovation.

Don't even get me started on the byzantine nonsense that is the IRS versus the Belastingdienst. I'll take the Belastingdienst any day.

Americans wouldn't know real innovation if a walkable neighborhood arrived on a highspeed train and began eliminating healthcare bureaucracy.

wokwokwok• 3 years ago

Do you think there’s some kind of karmic point scoring system that you win by being the first one to build horrible unethical dystopian AI models?

Or are you just complaining you won’t be able to horrifically exploit people using them to make lots of money?

…because, sure, red tape is bad, but is it ultimately that terrible not being a allowed to be super villain?

“But America has super villains! …! We’re being left behind…”

Ok… um. Yeah… I’m ok with that. Please don’t try to be a super villain.

These laws don’t seem nearly as outrageous as you make them out to be.

aqme288• 3 years ago

Would you say the same things about FDA regulations?

As a programmer who used to work on medical devices, these sound pretty similar like the FDA regulations we dealt with. The goal isn't to stifle innovation, it's to keep scammers and crooks out of the market and make things better for everyone. The EU doesn't want another Thalidomide, and the US shouldn't want another Theranos.

cschmid• 3 years ago

The only way to avoid falling under the provisions of the act is to not have any customers in the EU -- that's quite a big market to cut yourself out of, and definitely something a big company cannot afford to do.

alasdair_2• 3 years ago

The effect is going to be that all the innovation happens elsewhere, big AI companies will develop outside Europe.

The EU has rules for aircraft and automobile manufacturing and yet Airbus and Ferrari seem to be able to continue to be world leaders in their fields.

Moreover, there are very few restrictions on many industries in Somalia, yet for some reason it fails to be a hub of innovation.

Regulations don’t immediately mean a flight of intellectual capability to less restrictive places.

ChuckNorris892• 3 years ago

The EU AI act is more for protecting people from being exploited by companies and institutions and having AI take the fall.

Basically what they're trying to prevent, is that you can't deny someone welfare, or an insurance claim, or a close their bank account with the justification that "computer says NO"[1]. For every such decision, a human should be at the wheel who can bring a legal fitting justification and be responsible for it.

[1] https://youtu.be/x0YGZPycMEU?t=8

btbuildem• 3 years ago

That seems like a very reasonable stance. AI is a tool like any other, the entities with agency that use it are still people.

logicchains4• 3 years ago

New transparency and risk assessment requirements for providers of (generative) foundation models like GTP

Anyone following the space would be aware that there's currently a huge Cambrian explosion of innovation in foundation models going on. Something like this, requiring you to go through a bunch of potentially expensive bureaucracy would completely kill this growth in the EU, to the benefit of the larger players.

NickHoff• 3 years ago

AI is moving too fast to regulate. A lot has happened in the field just during the time that these "last minute amendments" have been discussed. It's more likely that the EU will end up with laws that are obsolete by the time they're implemented, take forever to revise or repeal, and just sit there constraining innovation for no good reason. For example, if an EU-based startup wants to build a generative AI system to make interior design renders to show off furniture for a magazine (or whatever), how much time and legal expense will the "transparency and risk assessment requirement" add?

To be fair some of this sounds like a reasonable idea, like prohibiting "remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces". The issue is that this law would only prohibit using AI to do that. Let's outlaw the things we really don't want (like algorithmic voter influence) in a technology-agnostic way and then let AI flourish.

cmilton4• 3 years ago

Why do we assume evil? How do our unfounded decisions today affect the possibilities of progress? How easy will it be to repeal these laws when we find the harm they may cause? I would prefer to wait and see.

soulofmischief2• 3 years ago

In the current climate, and generally, you should distrust your government on a systematic level, and take pride in doing so. They certainly distrust you.

cmilton4• 3 years ago

That sentiment doesn't really bother me. Most of the "current climate" exists within these screens.

Just so we are clear, I am against this premature neutering of technology.

renjimen11• 3 years ago

That’s a wildly sweeping statement. I am assuming you don’t live in a functioning social democracy. You should try it some time, it might restore your faith in the ability of centralised power to improve the lives of its citizens

ttjjtt2• 3 years ago

Because the results of the last few decades of tech optimism have been so utterly dismal? And all the other results of the neo lib deregulation dream which, we’re most of us are either quietly panicked or despondent about.

cmilton4• 3 years ago

Because the results of the last few decades of tech optimism have been so utterly dismal?

Can you expound upon this a bit? In my view, we have witnessed astonishing progress in tech over the last few decades.

neo lib deregulation dream

What is your dream?

gumballindie11• 3 years ago

While the AI Act’s references to copyright issues in generative AI are still very vague and only stress how much of a grey area it is, requiring providers of large models to be more transparent about their sources seems not a bad thing as such. As many aspects of the act it will be seen how this works out in practice.

If my license prohibits use of my work for ai training, or requires that any modified code includes my license or credits, or i lack a license, or my web blog doesnt give you permission to train against my content then you shouldnt use it. Google tried hijacking content with amp and ai is not different from it. If you violate my terms then i want to be able to submit evidence - or suspicion - to a government agency that audits or fines you to oblivion. Ideally you have to pay damages equal to the number of people that you may have sold my content to, in full or partially.

This would lead to a win win setup. Artists, developers, writers, lawyers and so on would need compensation for training content - one time or ongoing - leading to higher quality models, job growth and a superior ai product over all.

Ai is by and large a net positive but needs to be done right.

endisneigh12• 3 years ago

This would lead to a win win setup. Artists, developers, writers, lawyers and so on would need compensation for training content - one time or ongoing - leading to higher quality models, job growth and a superior ai product over all.

I have been told information should be free, though.

gumballindie11• 3 years ago

According to terms and conditions. Ip is not information, it’s work. Pay for it or dont use it. I decide the terms of my own output not you, and certainly not a corporation that resells it and threatens me with unemployment.

andybak8• 3 years ago

This feels like (yet another) extension of copyright. Whilst I'm not sure I completely disagree with you, I want people to acknowledge that copyright is not the natural state of the universe. Prior to (I think) 1790 there was no copyright and human beings managed minor things like, you know, the renaissance and stuff like that.

Copyright was invented and enforced and the results have been a mixed bag. It seems to suffer from a ratchet effect where the law only ever increases the scope to which copyright applies and never decreases it.

However intuitive your sense of your moral rights are, it's about the net benefit to society and we should be very careful what we wish for.

nickfromseattle• 3 years ago

it's about the net benefit to society and we should be very careful what we wish for.

Seems like we have a classic trolly problem.

On one track, compensating copyright holders is required for LLMs, and it's going to be very expensive to acquire all of this copyrighted info, meaning only the biggest companies can afford to do it.

On the other track, compensating copyright holders is not required, LLMs (led by big tech) capture most of the economic value from every incremental piece of content created by humans in perpetuity, consolidating wealth in the hands of a few shareholders and insiders.

Neither seem ideal.

gumballindie11• 3 years ago

Prior to (I think) 1790 there was no copyright and human beings managed minor things like, you know, the renaissance and stuff like that.

Curious if the introduction of copyright is what led to an explosion of products and innovation. Suddenly people were given an incentive to monetize their ideas. I doubt the renaissance happened due to a lack of copyright. I think it's more due to social, political and health circumstances rather than the lack of protection of one's work. We, in Europe, suffered from disease, famine, war, to the point where we reached the conclusion that enough is enough - we need rules to the game.

tpxl4• 3 years ago

If creating LLMs based on copyrighted data is found to be legal, all that will do is allow giant companies to sell copyrighted work without crediting the original authors, while leaving everyone else in the dirt.

zirgs5• 3 years ago

You can't forbid others from learning from your work. If you want to prevent it then don't post it publicly.

gumballindie11• 3 years ago

Sorry, ai is not “others”, it’s software. This argument of yours is equal to if you dont want to get mugged dont go outside.

sgt101• 3 years ago

Missing :

- statutory watermarking of output - disclosure of training data - under age & vulnerability limitations - limitation of indiscriminate publication

lvl1022• 3 years ago

I quite frankly don’t care what EU does. They’ve not been innovating at all there. They took a bunch of Chinese money and now they’re doing everything they can to harm US tech firms…while the US is de facto defending them with own tax money in Ukraine.

I cannot wait for EUZ to fail.

hef1989816• 3 years ago

If those poor, under-priviledged US tech just a helping hand in defending themselves against those evil, democratic governments... Communism it is! /s

On a more serious note, you are aware of the fact that a lot of the material and money Ukraine is gettong comes from European NATO countries and the EU? It is almost like an, whats the word again, alliance supporting Ukraine instead of a single country.

lvl1022• 3 years ago

Is it an alliance when EU led by Germany funded Putin regime for the past two decades?

Interesting.

By the way, more than 85% of the funding is coming from the US.

My point really is that even if EU regulations against US big techs are well-intentioned, they’re effectively doing the work for China. I don’t understand what the Chinese have done for the EU. US, on the other hand, have spilled blood to defend the continent.

r2vcap• 3 years ago

I don't care what EU countries do to curb their productivity. (I am a Korean national.) However, I am worried that another barrier is being built when considering the case of GDPR. And I hope they don't intervene in other countries as if their thoughts are universal.

renjimen11• 3 years ago

The intention is to protect the rights and wellbeing of citizens. It’s short-termism to allow unfettered productivity gains at the expense of the populace.

zeroonetwothree10• 3 years ago

And who exactly do productivity gains benefit?

bitL3• 3 years ago

EU is going to legislate itself to irrelevance, missing another tech train that could propel its future. AI ethics won't make money.

melvinmelih• 3 years ago

There’s a reason why Google didn’t release Bard to EU yesterday, expect that to happen more and more as they fall further and further behind.

Renaud• 3 years ago

It’s ok.

Either Google manages to follow these principles, which to me look aligned to their announced intent for more ethical AI use, or they won’t, and that means their product won’t follow the basic ethical guidelines proposed by the EU, in which case, I’d rather it not be available in the EU (and I don’t understand how anyone would defend a company not ready to address these ethical concerns).

renjimen11• 3 years ago

Exactly. If they’re not willing to understand and vet their own tech in the face of basic regulation, then no thank you. Sad the US population will once again be guinea pigs for these disruptive technologies

lexandstuff• 3 years ago

It's just a large language model trained on textual content. It's not going to hurt you.

Do you have to wait until every product you use is bureaucratically vetted?

iinnPP• 3 years ago

We have a unique problem here that cannot be solved with legislation. The world government will never agree to it and will use it for power. The citizenry will never agree to it because the government won't.

Furthermore, we almost unanimously agree that murdering others (especially children) is bad. Murder happens all the time.

Eventually, someone is going to release a self-growth-AI on the world.

That event is what we need to prepare for. Everything else is not worth the effort. More so given the time we have to deal with this issue.

guy98238710• 3 years ago

The problem is still the same as it was with the cookie law: Should we regulate capability or intent? Regulation by capability is easy to specify in the law, but it cripples useful technology as much as predatory technology and thus ends up being just a legal manifestation of technophobia, hindering overall progress. Regulation by intent/purpose or actual harm (as opposed to potential harm) is a much better option in my opinion.

The other troubling aspect of this is that it's not going to be proportional, but then hard-edged law is a broader problem.

duringmath• 3 years ago

Funny how all these EU rules come at the detriment of US companies.

All they do is keep piling on regs and they're doing it for emerging tech with exactly zero proof of harm.

aqme288• 3 years ago

I'm seeing lots of comments from fellow software engineers that seem to boil down to "all software regulation is bad" and I'd like to know where that's coming from, or if it's just a minority of the more libertarian-minded among us.

Regulation can of course be a problem, but it can also do a lot of good to protect consumers. Do people feel this way about the FDA, the FAA, etc?

robswc3• 3 years ago

Do people feel this way about the FDA, the FAA, etc?

To a degree sometimes. There is no benefit to regulators to allow for more risk, because they will be blamed if something goes wrong. There's hardly anything to gain (as a regulator) to take risk.

aqme288• 3 years ago

Completely agree, but that’s not the same as saying that these organizations do not provide benefit

jkeisling• 3 years ago

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. If you look at even the US regulatory environment, for example: FDA approval for new drugs takes decades and billions, and enough said on America's "War on Drugs". The NRC has practically strangled nuclear power in its cradle, and environmental review adds years and millions to practically all new infrastructure. Health insurance regulation and financial regulation have enshrined a few oligopolistic players, with nearly impossible regulatory burdens for any new entrants. It's not merely that any one regulatory agency has run amok. All such agencies are fundamentally incentivized to increase their power and reduce risk by adding regulation in a one-way ratchet, while they have very little incentive to allow innovation except sustained external pressure, which new industries rarely can sustain. Large corporations rarely counterbalance this regulatory creep: they welcome regulation, since they can capture agencies to their will through lobbying and the "revolving-door" and afford a legal staff, while startups and individuals still face impossible regulatory burdens. Don't even get started on copyright. Regulation in America is fundamentally broken, and while it admittedly does manage to "protect" consumers from some of the worst potential abuses, it does so by choking innovation and essentially freezing us in the 1970s.

Why should we believe that AI regulation would be any different? Whatever agency is given power won't just stop at reasonable guidelines. They will likely be pressured by big players like Microsoft to choke off open source, by copyright giants like the RIAA and Disney to stop generation, and by every imaginable constituency to protect their jobs from change. Most importantly, individual open-source development will become prohibitive, and AI will be locked behind corporate APIs. In fact, if you look at sites like LessWrong, AI doomers are openly welcoming regulation precisely because they know an FDA-like agency will stop progress dead in its tracks. Make no mistake, AI regulation will hand enormous power to governments and corporations while denying it to the individual, whatever the good intentions were at the beginning. It is a devil's bargain, and if we as an industry are to take it in the name of "safety", we should at least do it with eyes open, instead of pretending that all that is being asked for is "guardrails" and "common sense".

aqme288• 3 years ago

Maybe we disagree on a fundamental level then. Even though the FDA, NRC, FAA, etc overregulate and stifle somewhat, I think they are a net good and that a regulation-free environment would not be a better situation.

timwaagh3• 3 years ago

I don't why bard isn't coming to the EU. Is it this or something else. Google hasn't explained it. I would hope that any ai act will allow reasonable players like Openai, Microsoft and Google to continue their good work without ruining into too much red tape. Considering what is happening, if it's because of the ai act, the act might be too strict as the EU risks getting disadvantaged by not having access to the same tools as 180 other countries. AI will ultimately prove too useful to ban.

input_sh2• 3 years ago

Under what criteria did you reach the conclusion that OpenAI, Microsoft and Google are reasonable players in all of this? Is it purely based on their name recognition? Is that not antithetical to the idea of a competitive market?

Also, there aren't 180 countries in the world that are outside of EU.

timwaagh3• 3 years ago

I read 180 countries get access. From what I have seen from the list the ter m'countries and territories' might be more accurate.

I think they're reasonable players. They are either well established or have goodish intents. I don't think they ever did anything worse than package internet explorer with Windows.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Also, there aren’t 180 countries in the world that are outside of EU.

If by countries you mean “UN member or non-member observer states”, correct.

But that’s pretty much the most conservative count. (And leaves 168 non-EU countries.)

robswc3• 3 years ago

Is it this or something else

I ofc can't speak for Google but I know the work I did it was much easier to simply block the EU until compliance was sorted out. It was almost always fine and we didn't have to change anything but it wasn't worth the risk.

I'd be shocked if it never made it to Europe.

timwaagh3• 3 years ago

Google has now said they will do it but indeed they want to sort out compliance first.

Mortiffer• 3 years ago

Funny how on the same day we see google announcing that BRAD will not expand into Europe

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35914705

otikik• 3 years ago

I hope they put something about user interface there.

The “EU IA UI” act.

polski-g• 3 years ago

Thank god for the First Amendment: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...

jcarrano• 3 years ago

The problem with this is that is is too easy to encompass lots of current uses of data analytics and even primitive AI in its definition. Also, does a simple matrix scoring classify as AI?

AI systems which can influence voters in political campaigns and by use of suggestion systems on very large platforms

I read that as "targeted advertisement is banned for political campaigns".

biometric categorisation systems

This brings back the debates on "biased" AI, where people seem to forget that machine learning works on the basis of bias and then go and propose introducing more bias to counteract.

My guess is that we will reach a state where anyone using ML/AI for anything having to do with people will be exposed to a fine, but the EU will apply the rules to it's own discretion against the companies that it does not like.

The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably

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