EU strikes deal to regulate ChatGPT, AI tech

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-08/eu-strikes-deal-to-regulate-chatgpt-other-ai-in-landmark-act

by helsinkiandrew • 3 years ago

218 388 3 years ago

bloomberg.com

helsinkiandrew3• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/qV4xB

PeterStuer• 3 years ago

Anyone have the text that was agreed upon?

Edit: I know the text is not final as it needs more work, but I was hoping for a leaked draft text of amendments that clinched 'the agreement'.

arlort• 3 years ago

I don't think it's ready yet, from what I read in statements they found a compromise but it still needs to go through some processes to turn the agreed points into legalese (and then the translations)

I don't think it'll be voted on this month

snowpid• 3 years ago

This month is Christmas. It won't.

raverbashing3• 3 years ago

Yeah without the actual agreement (which is still subject to voting, etc) this is an empty discussion

This is literally based on one short tweet

Edit: this seems to be a (slightly) more substantial press release https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231206IP...

rightbyte2• 3 years ago

"prohibits ... social scoring based on social behaviour or personal characteristics;"

Does this outlaw Tinder?

nunez• 3 years ago

AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will;
AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation).

So basically all social media in their current forms?

frantzmiccoli• 3 years ago

I haven't found a final version online.

I wrote an article / review of the drafts that were available a few months ago. You have the links to the sources.

https://outofthecomfortzone.frantzmiccoli.com/thoughts/2023/...

PeterHolzwarth• 3 years ago

I've heard the phrase "regulating yourself out of the market."

Do you feel this applies here?

diet_jerome• 3 years ago

Of course. I mean this is the eu we're talking about.

thefz2• 3 years ago

Happy not to conduct business with a party if its practice does not reflect my values.

CamperBob2• 3 years ago

So the answer is to take that choice away from you?

hartator• 3 years ago

Are you ready to opt out to cancer treatments found by US AIs?

satvikpendem2• 3 years ago

Indeed, I will have to geoblock my products out of the EU, as I've heard others have already done.

soulofmischief10• 3 years ago

I'll go further. I fully do not recognize certain internet laws enacted recently by various states in the US, such as requiring identification to view a website, or banning children from using the internet after dark.

Laws like these are unconstitutional and I intend to actively disregard them while still serving customers in those states.

JonChesterfield5• 3 years ago

The axiom is that the EU is such an important market that it can dictate terms to the world. Such as the landmark success of persuading Apple that it may as well use USB on mobile phones.

It's not as clear that it's better to give up on artificial intelligence than to give up on Europe. When your axioms are unsound, you can derive nonsense from them. So yep, it seems Europe isn't going to be the future of machine intelligence, to the astonishment of noone.

akira2501• 3 years ago

The axiom is that the EU is such an important market that it can dictate terms to the world.

So the EU exists strictly in an effort to bully the rest of the world into their continental ideas? I thought the purpose was to provide representation and protection to their own citizens.

So yep, it seems Europe isn't going to be the future of machine intelligence, to the astonishment of noone.

They mistook State Authority as an end unto itself. Everything else is going to be secondary to that.

tensor• 3 years ago

Before I sold my previous company, a medium size ai company, it was already often an internal debate whether the EU was worth selling to for our size company.

The reality is that the EU is a much much smaller market than North America, and expensive to operate in even without onerous AI regulation.

It’s likely easier to support the EU for larger companies, but there is little doubt in my mind that this sort of regulation in the near term will ensure that Europe will always get services much later than NA, and maybe some companies will choose not to bring some products to the EU at all.

snordgren2• 3 years ago

The EU has been declining in its share of the world market year on year - it should focus on stopping the decline, not adding more regulatory burden.

marvin• 3 years ago

What a trade. Sacrificed the next qualitative shift in economic growth after the industrial revolution, and in return was able to force the switch of the Lightning port in one type of phone for USB-C.

pipes• 3 years ago

This all seems premature. So far we have something that can generate text and pictures based on other text and pictures ?

helsinkiandrew3• 3 years ago

This all seems premature. So far we have something that can generate text and pictures based on other text and pictures ?

I think the reasoning is that at one time Social Media was just a few sites where people could share photos and fun articles they'd read - and it turned into a privacy/hate speech/monopoly minefield that no one is sure is completely good for society and now is impossible to control.

ekianjo• 3 years ago

why do you have to control anything? Again the government knowing no bounds, but not surprising coming from non-democratic bureaucratic EU

kasperni• 3 years ago

Really? I know Snap AI (which is available for kids over 13) will happily advise you with how to cut yourself if you ask it.

rafale• 3 years ago

So would Google or any obscure forums. Just like fraud, the optimal amount of negativity in a technology is never zero. Gotta accept some amount of issues to maximize the benefits to drawbacks ratio.

singularity2001• 3 years ago

praying that the regulators do not read this: so far it can generate code and run code either in the sandbox or if you give it access to your system.

troupo18• 3 years ago

This all seems premature. So far we have something that can generate text and pictures based on other text and pictures ?

People say this with a straight face having China as an example, and news like this https://www.404media.co/fusus-ai-cameras-took-over-town-amer... and Deloitte alraedy campaigning for predictive policing: https://www2.deloitte.com/fi/fi/pages/public-sector/articles...

danielovichdk• 3 years ago

Can't wait to read the deal.

But this should not be very hard to agree on, which pretty much showcases the fuckery going.

A fucking no brainer to turn down. Which it seems they not really did but perhaps did a little bit.

"The negotiators agreed to allow some live scanning of faces, but with safeguards and exemptions, Breton said. The deal would prohibit biometric scanning that categorizes people by sensitive characteristics, such as political or religious beliefs, sexual orientation or race. Officials said this was one of the most difficult and sensitive issues in the talks."

rightbyte2• 3 years ago

Seems impossible to store photos without recording religious affiliation. Some Jews, Sihks, Muslim women etc wear headwear that is a give away.

mytailorisrich5• 3 years ago

Storing a photo is not the same as "biometric scanning" of that photo to categorise it.

mitjam• 3 years ago

The EU has provided a high level overview of the regulatory framework here: [1]. Quite old (2021) but the general idea is probably still valid. I think the idea is sound.

The question is whether foundation models will be regulated already as high risk because they could be applied in high risk use cases or if only the use case applications themselves will be regulated.

It tends to be more in the direction of "let's regulate the foundation, as well".

BTW: Something similar is in the works for regulating software, including open source software with the new "EU Directive for Liability of Defective Products". Here is a discussion: [2].

The rationale behind both seem to be something like: We (software vendors in the EU) rely so heavily on open source software and put just a little bit on top, that it would be too much work for us to ensure compliance of the underlying software for our use case. So, please, dear regulators, regulate the underlying software, as well, even if it is open source, so that the compliance burden is not on us, but on the authors of the underlying software.

The compliance industry is happy (new business), the big software vendors are happy (reduced competition from smaller vendors in high-stakes industries), the regulators are happy (fewer vendors to deal with while ensuring the regulation will actually be enforced).

/sigh

[1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory...

[2] https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2023/open-source-...

ur-whale• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/FMB2W

miohtama5• 3 years ago

AFAIK the actual final legislative text is not yet publicly available, so we do not know what was passed.

But might change any moment.

boobsbr• 3 years ago

What?

How can legislation pass without the public knowing what is in it before it passes?

dorchadas• 3 years ago

From what I understand, it's not passed yet. They've just reached a deal on the amendments that need to be added so it will be passed.

miohtama5• 3 years ago

By 2022, there were examples that AI was actively harming people. In a Dutch scandal, decisions made by algorithms were linked to families being forcibly separated from their children, while students studying remotely alleged that AI systems discriminated against them based on the color of their skin.

These were not AIs but rule-based systems with if elses. The current legislation is bad, because it tries to regulate the technology, not how it is used. Dutch government people should be responsible for the decisions they or their system produces, AI or no AI.

phh2• 3 years ago

The current legislation is bad, because it tries to regulate the technology, not how it is used.

That's not what the EU regulation does. As an example, High Risk Machine Translation will be regulated no matter how you do it. The standard underlying the EU's AI Act explicit mention that AI system can be anything from rule-based to machine learning and mention some other AI methods. The regulation is on task/usage not on the technology.

Edit: "High Risk" in my example refers to the usage

miohtama5• 3 years ago

Thank you for the clarification!

robertlagrant6• 3 years ago

AI system can be anything from rule-based to machine learning

Then why call it AI?

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

What we call "AI" today we called algorithms yesteryear and applications yesterdecade.

It's all marketing, I think EU is right to accurately use the "AI" marketing term for what it is.

phh2• 3 years ago

It's all marketing, I think EU is right to accurately use the "AI" marketing term for what it is.

I think EU calling it "AI" is fine today. I'm more worried about the future. In 5 years when the hype word for this class of tools becomes Tchounka. The world will say that EU is late and they need to pass a Tchounka law. While the reality is that EU passed an automated data processing law and doesn't care about how it's done.

mewpmewp2• 3 years ago

AI has always been used to describe plain algorithmical things as well. See video games for example.

But ultimately everything in life can be thought of as algorithm so it really doesn't matter. If it's artificial and it can solve problems beyond simple computations, it is AI.

Humans are algorithms as well, just very complex and nuanced ones that we have a lot of trouble reverse engineering.

I would say that a complex hardcoded algorithm that is used for a racing game is a stronger AI than a simple, small neural network for one specific narrow task.

Intelligence = ability to solve problems, AI = something that is artificial and can solve problems beyond being a simple tool.

fuglede_• 3 years ago

Sounds what something someone might want to call an expert system?

In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.[1] Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code

martingoodson• 3 years ago

Do you have any reference for this claim, or are you guessing? It was reported that the algorithm was a Gradient Boosting Machine by investigators who gained access to the code.

https://www.lighthousereports.com/suspicion-machines-methodo...

alach11• 3 years ago

Well if you torture the analogy enough, you could argue a tree based model is a lot of if/else statements!

GuB-422• 3 years ago

According to the EU proposal, this is what they mean by AI:

(a)Machine learning approaches, including supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning, using a wide variety of methods including deep learning;

(b)Logic- and knowledge-based approaches, including knowledge representation, inductive (logic) programming, knowledge bases, inference and deductive engines, (symbolic) reasoning and expert systems;

(c)Statistical approaches, Bayesian estimation, search and optimization methods.

So rule-based systems (b) are considered AI for the sake of regulation.

mikojan• 3 years ago

Aren't all current machine learning approaches statistical approaches using Bayesian estimation?

soulofmischief10• 3 years ago

So every program ever made?

aprilthird2021• 3 years ago

I agree with your point the users are at fault, not the technology itself. It's the govt which was separating families wrongly and the schools who discriminated who should suffer, not the companies making the tech.

That being said, this is a problem which regulation can be made to help solve. For example, a rule saying that any sold or licensed LLM to businesses needs to be run against a set of cleaning / filtering models (like the recently-released Purple Llama) before being packed up and sold / hosted. Maybe there can be an exception for individuals and exempt orgs (charities and religions may get an exemption, I could imagine).

telmo4• 3 years ago

These were not AIs but rule-based systems with if elses.

What is fashionable to call AI these days are ultimately rule-based systems with if elses. It just so happens that it's a bazillion of those, and they are created by gradient descent.

mort963• 3 years ago

And that they're not if-elses but nonlinear functions.

lnxg33k1• 3 years ago

The Alabama of Europe

kylebenzle• 3 years ago

The stupidest of the new rules:

1) AI Act includes bans on biometric systems that identify people based on "sensitive characteristics", such as sexual orientation or race (except for "law enforcement"). (LOL, so an AI isn't "allowed" to tell if a person is black, white or Asian?)

2) It also includes new transparency requirements for all general-purpose AI models and stronger rules for "very powerful" models. ("Yes, because with such 'great power' comes great responsibility).

ginko2• 3 years ago

LOL, so an AI isn't "allowed" to tell if a person is black, white or Asian?

Yes. I don't see what you find so funny about this.

bequanna• 3 years ago

Race is one of the most important attributes used to describe a person of interest.

Sex, race, height, build, hair, last known clothing

avalys• 3 years ago

You don't see anything funny about a biometric identification system that is not allowed to consider factors that would be considered indicative of "race"?

malux854• 3 years ago

As with anything the devil is in the details - The word “tell” there is doing a lot of work.

Does it mean “The AI should not have any bias towards any race”

Or does it mean “The AI should not be able to distinguish whatsoever between two races”

To me, the phrasing above “AI should not be able to tell” sounds like the latter, which is drastically wrong and I suspect difficult to prove.

I think most people would agree it should not have bias, but it’s important that in the wording of the law we don’t eliminate functional stuff that’s important - ie being able to determine race - for example there are certain medical conditions that affect different races at different rates, so the ability to distinguish is an important factor in analysis.

stale20025• 3 years ago

The reason why it is funny is that almost by definition, anything that a biometric data detectors could detect would fall under the banned category.

A bio-metrics detector, detects biometrics! And the law basically bans bio metrics detectors from detecting biometrics.

It would be like if there was a law that said that restaurants can't sell food.

Or if hammer regulations prevented hammers from being used on nails.

Or that water could be used for anything but making things wet or drinking.

It is almost definitionally contradictory.

That is indeed funny.

phyrex• 3 years ago

It’s funny because 1) any person you interact with face to face can tell your race and 2) what is the AI supposed to do if you tell it your race?

simbolit3• 3 years ago

You do not explain why these rules are stupid, much less "the stupidest".

Both rules, on first sight, make __a lot__ of sense.

scrollaway2• 3 years ago

“Transparency” is stupid for some people here because they cannot fathom that a technology significantly impacting people’s lives should be auditable.

LexGray• 3 years ago

Because it assumes the data only has negative use. Asian and black communities are underserved in many ways from employment, medicine to education.

Forbidding AI to identify race is forbidding AI tools to help serve those people better or even detect that they are being served poorly.

It assumes even that targeted advertising by race or gender orientation is only exploitative and not seeking to help fill key needs.

AI is only made by racists and religious jobs as a basic assumption seems like a very stupid assumption.

pelorat2• 3 years ago

It's illegal in most of the EU, maybe all of the EU, to register ones "race", even for the police.

personomas• 3 years ago

What do you mean? I don't understand.

wintermutestwin• 3 years ago

Cognitive behavioral manipulation of people

from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/202...

Aren't the valuations of Google,Facebook et al mostly based on their future capabilities to do exactly this when they feed everyone's data into their AI?

bondarchuk4• 3 years ago

The EU has a billboard campaign going recently with pro-EU messages and utopian imagery which is also be cognitive behavioural manipulation of people (manipulating their thoughts and behaviour (voting) to be more pro-EU).

FirmwareBurner2• 3 years ago

Do you have any sources on that? I wouldn't be surprised though, with populism and Euro-skepticism at all time highs.

pyuser583• 3 years ago

Could you share some links about this?

dgellow2• 3 years ago

The EU doing a basic advertising campaign is somehow equivalent to mega corporation manipulating people’s behavior (to their own benefits) by controlling their content feed? Your comparison dilutes terms so much that the whole issue of algorithmic content feeds is lost.

afavour• 3 years ago

That quote is missing some context, the term is used in a section on “systems considered a threat to people”, the examples it gives are specifically behavioural manipulation to do something dangerous like violence. It’s not just any attempt to change someone’s mind on something, that would make all advertising illegal.

I agree the wording is too vague, though.

CuriousSkeptic• 3 years ago

that would make all advertising illegal.

I’d vote for someone pushing that.

As a bonus with all those American ad-driven malware driven out of the market there would definitely be room for European companies to compete on delivering actual value

Spiwux2• 3 years ago

Great. Glad to see we're still world leaders at shooting ourselves in the foot. It makes sense to regulate AI use in critical infrastructure and flat out outlaw use of AI to manipulate public opinion, but that's where it should have stopped.

stevoski• 3 years ago

They sure do pass a lot of new rules these days about sweeping.

espe• 3 years ago

containing the downsides of Silicon Valley’s latest export

through which political lense do i have to look in order to put it like this? there is decades of european (continuing the bloc thinking) research and braindrain (and wasted opportunity) going into this.

ArtTimeInvestor• 3 years ago

As someone living in Europe, I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

The upside: From an investing perspective, the more regulations the EU comes up with, the more US software companies are a safe bet.

The downside: Europe missed the internet and now will miss AI. How will that affect quality of life here?

Is nobody in the EU bringing up the question why every single European citizen is dependent on US hardware, US software and US services? How we got here and where this will lead to, when software will not only be our "bicycle of the mind" but literally the car that drives us around, the nurse that cares for our health and the craftsman that builds our home?

tremon• 3 years ago

why every single European citizen is dependent on US hardware, US software and US services

Mostly because US companies keep buying their EU competitors. Nokia, Skype, Spotify, ARM, ASML and countless others all originated in Europe. The ones that remain European are the ones that cannot be bought so easily, like Matrix (UK) or Mastodon (DE).

golemotron2• 3 years ago

That makes the original point. They are bought by US companies because the US has facilitated tech and capital growth. In another world, the EU would've done better on that and bought US companies.

lackbeard• 3 years ago

Isn't ASML a Dutch company? I can't seem to find any evidence they've ever been sold.

dgellow2• 3 years ago

You may want to review your info, these companies haven’t been bought out by US corporations

edit: I mean other than Nokia and Skype of course

s3p• 3 years ago

Ah yes I forgot how dependent the world is on checks notes Skype and Nokia

tudorw2• 3 years ago

We got BAE Systems and QinetiQ so...

rad_gruchalski• 3 years ago

Neither is EU.

elteto3• 3 years ago

Is nobody in the EU bringing up the question why every single European citizen is dependent on US hardware, US software and US services?

And even more concerning is the dependence on US aid and weapons for Ukraine. How Europe doesn’t see Ukraine’s invasion as an existential threat is beyond me.

api• 3 years ago

If isolationists like Trump come to power in the US and do things like pull out of NATO, Europe might be suddenly in serious trouble.

This is not a far fetched possibility. Even if Trump loses or isn’t even on the ticket, an increasing number of younger Americans are opposed to overseas involvements including some on the left side of the spectrum. Ballooning US national debt interest and social security issues could force the US to make steep cuts in places like military and overseas aid.

uxp8u61q2• 3 years ago

You must live in a bubble if you think that EU leaders don't see the invasion of Ukraine as an existential threat... Do you get all your news about what happens in Europe from HN?

tomp• 3 years ago

European here.

Ukraine/Russia war is caused by disagreements between US/NATO and Russia.

EU has nothing to do with it, and if US didn't involve itself with Europe or try to expand NATO, there wouldn't be any war. The chance of it spreading to the rest of Europe, except if EU countries attack Russia (or help Ukraine with too much weapons), is zero.

tiahura2• 3 years ago

Are there predominately ethnically Russian regions in Germany or France on their border with Russia?

I think Berlin and Paris are fine for the foreseeable future.

apwell232• 3 years ago

How Europe doesn’t see Ukraine’s invasion as an existential threat is beyond me.

Weren't we told that the whole war is about food exports from ukraine which euro countries like germany depend on.

Is the 'food is new oil' narrative not well accepted. Places like usa cannot export to germany because farmland and rivers have been poisoned by gylphosate

Joeri• 3 years ago

How exactly do you see Russia as an existential threat to the EU? Putin does not seem interested in conquering the EU, at all. He’s never mentioned anything of the sort that I know of, and he’s not the guy to mince words about his intentions. He’s not even really interested in conquering all of Ukraine, because he did not at any time mobilize the kind of force that would be needed for such an endeavor.

I mean, yes, Russia’s nukes are an existential threat, but to the whole planet, not just the EU.

JonChesterfield5• 3 years ago

The EU doesn't aspire to economic or commercial success. It's an ideologically motivated socialist state with no real ideas for how to fund a high quality of life for the majority, but that's OK because the stated objective is equal quality of life, not high quality of life.

Except for the few people on the top of the hierarchy, they warrant maximum quality of life as is traditional in such power structures.

robswc• 3 years ago

This is the vibe I got. For better or worse, it seems people in Europe enjoy/pursue equality more than individual success. I know many people that move to the US to "escape" that system though and they've been quite successful.

kranke1552• 3 years ago

The EU isn’t a state at all. Getting tired of usually Americans talking about the EU as some kind of superstate. It’s nothing of the sort.

bugglebeetle• 3 years ago

The EU is not in anyway socialist. It’s a neoliberal Capitalist federation, explicitly so in all its founding documents and philosophy.

Tainnor4• 3 years ago

Apart from the fact that the EU is not a "state", the claim that it is in any way or shape "socialist" flies in the face of basically all available evidence (including the leadership of most EU countries, the composition of the EU parliament, the laws that are actually passed, ...), so it's hard to read your comment as anything but flamebait.

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

You didn't actually read the announcement. The EU is only regulating "high risk" uses of AI - i.e. facial recognition as used by law enforcement. Your spicy autocomplete and image generators should be safe.

Also, the EU didn't "miss the Internet", it got muscled out of the Internet by American tech monopolies.

chatmasta2• 3 years ago

the EU didn't "miss the Internet", it got muscled out of the Internet by American tech monopolies

This sounds like a distinction without a difference. The American tech monopolies only became monopolies because of their first mover advantage. The EU had no Internet companies with first mover advantage... in other words, they missed the Internet.

quadcore• 3 years ago

Absolutely. I think we are not going to see the end of that inflation anytime soon because of that. We have nothing to put in front of Google, Apple, Microsoft. Nothing.

The issue though is we need to federate. We are not Europe yet really but a bunch of small countries. The political setup is not there for big tech companies to thrives.

chaseha• 3 years ago

federated but united... we kinda already are, no? see all the state level privacy laws

mike_hock• 3 years ago

US hardware

Chinese hardware.

raverbashing3• 3 years ago

Europe missed the internet

What the EU doesn't have is large scale social networks, and large scale "infrastructure" companies (the likes of Google and AWS) but it is missing less than what your average US perspective sees. No wonder most US companies sell a lot to Europe (including B2B).

is dependent on US hardware, US software and US services

True. And the US (and the rest of the world) is dependent on HW produced on TSMC and assembled in China. It truly sucks

aenis• 3 years ago

Which in turn relies on litography equipment made in the EU and Japan.

charles_f2• 3 years ago

Disregarding the regulation itself - the logic you describe here is that non-EU competition isn't regulated, so EU shouldn't regulate anything to be competitive.

1- the EU didn't "miss the internet" because of regulatory policies. At least not regulations on the Internet.

2- even if that was the case, does it mean the EU should always level itself by the worst competitors?

3- and then, assuming it deregulated LLM, how would would it lead to a place where EU would suddenly becomes competitive on that market?

adastra22• 3 years ago

It missed the internet in the sense that it is near impossible to create an innovative (read: disruptive) internet company within the context of EU and member state regulations. So people don’t bother and entrepreneurs emigrate to the USA.

It looks like the EU is preparing to miss AI as well.

bluelu• 3 years ago

There is no fair use for copyright in Europe. That's the reason why we don't have any google here, and won't have any AI company here.

danenania• 3 years ago

Some level of regulation clearly is necessary, but it's also clear that it's possible to over-regulate (or mis-regulate) to the point that your regulations become meaningless because the activity you're attempting to regulate simply stops happening due to the added burden.

It's sometimes a bit hard to tell whether the EU's goal is to regulate tech in a way that still promotes its development and creates a net good for society or to just stop most development of new tech within the EU wholesale.

I've strongly considered moving from the US to the EU (Spain) since there is a lot to love about the culture, but the bureaucracy and arbitrary/capricious nature of regulations make it hard to justify trying to run any kind of innovative business there unless you have enough funding to pay a team of lawyers to protect you.

seydor2• 3 years ago

it did miss the internet, and partly thanks to uncompetitive regulation. You will not find the equivalent of gdpr that targets tourism or car manufacturing or fashion because those are large moneymakers in europe. Conversely, no large subsidies for internet or AI either. These industries don't just appear spontaneously

3.

MistralAI is a european company. It makes an unregulated open source AI and they are proud of both , it s actually part of their mission. It worked and it s becoming increasingly popular and successful. How will mistral grow to the size of openAI etc?

tsimionescu2• 3 years ago

The opposite is actually true, most likely the lack of regulation is why we don't have more European hardware and software. Look at Russia and China - they have much more onerous regulation, and have large popular local services (VKontakte, WeeChat). I'm not suggesting in any way we should want to be like China and Russia, but I think they prove that regulation doesn't prevent local business springing up to compete with international behemoths.

snordgren2• 3 years ago

Those countries simply forbid competitors from selling in their domestic markets.

EU regulations apply equally to EU and non-EU companies, so they won’t lead to homegrown tech champions. More likely they will cement the dominance of US tech giants because they’re the ones who have the resources to follow these regulations.

0xDEF• 3 years ago

popular local services
Vkontakte, WeeChat

Since 2008 big US tech companies have been a runaway GDP doubling success. It is laughable to compare them with VK and WeChat.

The reason we Europeans should aim to have our own big tech companies is because we are currently missing out on the greatest wealth generation in history.

seydor2• 3 years ago

I think you misunderstand how EU works. In reality it s a social club where mediocre politicians become careerists and climb the social ladder with a practically unlimitd budget of german money. There is no dialogue with any society other than with the brussels bubble and sometimes european academia. Some ambitious people latch onto the popular matters in the media like privacy, AI, climate, blockchain etc, and naturally they want to become a part of it by creating ... rules.

There was a time decades ago when EU seemed to have some cohesion, nowadays it s just ambitious individuals who want power for a few years and then go on with their lives to other endeavors. It's almost all process and a lot of marketing-speak these days. Really a lot of marketing-speak , that sounds frighteningly more and more like the ESG and DEI departments of corporates. It s become soulless

5kyn3t• 3 years ago

I often ask myself that too. The talent and infrastructure definitely exist in Europe. (until the people leave for the US) Is it the big VC money, or some magical governmental support (military-industrial complex)? is it the english language that gives the US-companies an advantage? is it the different mindset? I really do not know.

It's very weird and also sad and a bit frustrating to see that the market is in favor of one country that seems to get everything. I'm still crying for Nokia.

RivieraKid• 3 years ago

Yep, I've been wondering this too. It could be:

- America has a large unified market, it's easier to expand than in the EU.

- Immigration, smart and ambitious people move to America so their companies have access to better pool of talent. Better labor mobility compared to the EU also helps.

- Cultural differences related to entrepreneurship and work.

- Europeans who have historically moved to America have specific genetics and learned behavior, which is passed over generations. Maybe they're less risk-averse, more optimistic or have more energy and desire to do something. Basically, if you select a subpopulation which is willing to move to a different country hoping for a better life, this subpopulation will have distinct traits.

- Legislation, taxes?

Europe should first identify this as a problem and then try hard to understand and solve it.

brap• 3 years ago

I remember not long ago during the large tech layoffs, people in France and Germany were proud that the regulations meant they couldn’t be laid off, and looked down at other primitive countries without such regulations.

I wonder how attractive it is for Google/Microsoft/etc to start new teams and hire engineers in those countries. Probably not so much because of the risk.

I also wonder how these regulations affect salaries. For the same cost I would much rather hire an equally talented US engineer and avoid regulations holding me down. Therefore EU engineers must be cheaper to hire.

Maybe EU citizens want to trade things like job security for fewer jobs and lower wages, but I feel like people mostly imagine regulation is consequence-free.

PartiallyTyped• 3 years ago

The difference in salaries is sooooo vast that it make sense.

A new grad at AWS makes about 45k gross in Poland, 55k in Germany. That’s about 1/3 what a junior makes in the US. 90-110k for L5 in Germany, 80k in Poland, and 250k-300k in US.

It’s a no brainer all things considered.

csydas• 3 years ago

how do yoh mean europe missed the internet? my experience since i left the us years ago is that the tech used in eu is leagues above that from us companies and often feature equivalent or even better. banking and payments are a fine example of this as instant transfers were built into the banking system as i get it for some time and every bank i’ve used has had instant transfers by phone, card, or iban for years. even when i was in russia it was pretty common for pop up shops on the street to accept either cash or direct payments via a phone number they posted. even quite a few shops used this model.

i would not call the tech for common US life particularly good or something that is desirable to emulate. i thjnk europe is doing pretty well wrt the internet. it’s no coincidence for me that EU sites usually follow gdpr as its written and supposed to be and include a clear “deny all” button typically whereas many us and uk sites i try to read have pages of obtuse buttons and menus to manually deselect dozens (sometimes hundreds) of tracking “features” on their sites. (not 100% every site ofc but it’s my general experience)

i am not worried about being late to the party with ai either as the current offerings from the big players either are neutered to a pretty high amount or the companies are unabashed regarding their intent to serve more fuckjng ads via ai. i’ll gladly pass on that until we see a better alternative as the benefit for me from ai is minimal, and at best so far for my line of work ai just adds noise to already noisy conversations and more things to research and verify/fix than it does help.

i cannot see that the current ai hype is at a good and useful stage where i want to pay for it for daily use. it’s great and interesting tech for sure but it’s not worth it for me yet. that the ai based game where the goal is to trick the ai to give you passwords has been the most useful ai project i’ve used speaks a lot to me, as the “bad” and unexpected results are part of the challenge and fun of the game.

rldjbpin• 3 years ago

as pointed out by others, this is a myopic view. as much as "AI" has been overhyped, most of the regulations do not prevent the advancements in the field.

doing it right seems better than the startup grindset of experimenting and failing fast imho.

if you look away from consumer (and generic-use business) space, a lot of software and hardware has local players. to think you can do the whole stack inside europe is a pipe dream, however. even if you go wild west on the regulations.

gumballindie3• 3 years ago

Great steps in the right direction. Now the EU only needs to ensure property is not stolen by ai companies. Essentially if you cant prove your model has been trained on content you have licensed then selling it should be illegal.

Spiwux2• 3 years ago

Guilty until proven innocent. Very thoughtful take.

gumballindie3• 3 years ago

It’s called burden of proof. And usually sits with those selling products.

Kiro• 3 years ago

You're on a forum called Hacker News. Abolish all copyright.

CaptainFever3• 3 years ago

Indeed. Copying Is Not Theft.

deadbunny• 3 years ago

You're on a forum called Hacker News. Abolish all copyright except when it benefits me.

gumballindie3• 3 years ago

Sure, but abolishing all corpyright means that owned by corporations too. Let's see microsoft's source code. It won't be of quality, but as soon as that will be used for training ml i would agree to mine being used.

qwytw2• 3 years ago

Right.. it's also called 'news.ycombinator' which is certainly not an organization which would ever support abolishing copyright. Besides it's also a terrible idea, not having copyright would stifle innovation for years.

It's probably one of the best things humanity ever came up with (good luck making money being a writer in the the pre copyright days...).

pixl97• 3 years ago

Go EU, make "The Right to Read" real life!

etothepii2• 3 years ago

Those that pose a systemic risk will need to sign onto a voluntary code of conduct ...

How can one need to sign onto a voluntary code of conduct?

pelorat2• 3 years ago

Don't you have voluntary prison sentences in the USA? same thing i guess...

etothepii2• 3 years ago

What's a voluntary prison sentence?

SeanAnderson• 3 years ago

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23991850/eu-ai-act-artifi...

https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022...

I was reading through this a couple of evenings ago to try and get up to speed.

I find the spirit of the law to be something I broadly approve of -- for example: "There are a number of applications where the use of AI is banned, like scraping facial images from CCTV footage, categorization based on “sensitive characteristics” like race, sexual orientation, religion, or political beliefs, emotion recognition at work or school, or the creation of “social scoring” systems." These things seem broadly good to keep at bay.

However, laws are more than just what they intend - it's what they actually do, how they're enforced, their secondary effects, etc. People don't like being tracked without consent, but people haaate all the "This site uses cookies" popups.

From that perspective, I am not so sure about all of this. The language feels like its grasping at straws a bit prematurely in an attempt to head-off a problem which isn't fully manifest yet. Yes, it's good to get ahead of this sort of thing, but, IDK, I just wasn't fully convinced the legalese knew what it was on about. It even admits as such, stating that it encourages using broad terminology to future-proof itself and encompass the rapid pace of innovation.

Plus, yeah, as others have mentioned -- I feel EU is starting to litigate its way out of technical relevancy. It's one thing if the forefront of innovation were occurring there, and they were then dictating how that innovation should evolve, but that doesn't seem to be what's occurring. Technological progress is a cornerstone of strong GDPs and I'm starting to fear for the EU a bit in this regard.

catlifeonmars4• 3 years ago

People don't like being tracked without consent, but people haaate all the "This site uses cookies" popups.

I thought that was the intent… surfacing ubiquitous tracking to direct consumer frustration at the practice itself.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

I don't think so, because that consumer frustration has resulted in nothing. Nada.

We click the popups and get annoyed at the EU, not at the website.

soulofmischief10• 3 years ago

This is the same argument used in America for why taxes and expected gratuity aren't included in the item price, and it has done nothing to fix the problem.

troupo18• 3 years ago

in an attempt to head-off a problem which isn't fully manifest yet.

It has already manifested. All the dangerous uses of AI etc. are already there and used all the time all across the globe from China to the US.

It's one thing if the forefront of innovation were occurring there, and they were then dictating how that innovation should evolve

Doesn't the AI act specifically says: document your foundational models, and gives preference to opensource? It's a much better approach than the black box of OpenAI.

----

People don't like being tracked without consent, but people haaate all the "This site uses cookies" popups.

And the law that mentions neither browsers nor cookies is responsible for this how exactly?

That will be the main issue with EU AI Act, too: the industry will gaslight it, spread enormous amounts of FUD, will engage in years-long malicious compliance.

catlifeonmars4• 3 years ago

This. Making tracking annoying to consumers is feature, not a bug.

robertlagrant6• 3 years ago

All the dangerous uses of AI etc. are already there and used all the time all across the globe from China to the US.

If this is as bad as it gets then it wasn't so bad.

jiscariot• 3 years ago

How many popup warnings will I need to bypass/accept in order to use my LLM of choice?

wellthisisgreat• 3 years ago

Just a brief conversation where you’d need to make your case to a friendly EU-hosted LLM

bilsbie• 3 years ago

What are the regulations exactly?

error9348• 3 years ago

https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1733481002234679685

The EU AI Act negotiations ended. One contentious issue was the regulation of foundation models, particularly open source ones.
Kudos to the French, German, and Italian governments for not giving up on open source models.
Juicy part: "The legislation ultimately included restrictions for foundation models but gave broad exemptions to “open-source models,” which are developed using code that’s freely available for developers to alter for their own products and tools. The move could benefit open-source AI companies in Europe that lobbied against the law, including France’s Mistral and Germany’s Aleph Alpha, as well as Meta, which released the open-source model LLaMA."

satvikpendem2• 3 years ago

which released the open-source model LLaMA

While this part is inaccurate, the open-source stipulations of the regulation is something I applaud too, as it would be too easy to have regulatory capture by the big companies such that only they could afford the licenses necessary to create AI and thereby have onerous influence over our lives. More software, especially of the critical variety like AI, should be open source.

throwaway59593• 3 years ago

If you can’t innovate, litigate.

stainablesteel• 3 years ago

its almost like they want to send all of their talent to the US and Japan

such a weird move

Trombone122• 3 years ago

It's for fairness, the EU has to handicap itself after the US decided to ban abortion and persecute trans people.

__loam3• 3 years ago

Good, fuck exploitative machine learning.

nektro• 3 years ago

yay!

zlg_codes7• 3 years ago

"The algorithm" is going to be the next few decades' scapegoat. "It wasn't a human, it was a machine!"

"...coded by a human."

EU strikes deal to regulate ChatGPT, AI tech

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