EU running in circles trying to get AI Act out the door
- Reference: 1701870095
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/12/06/eu_ai_act_negotiations/
- Source link:
Talks between EU member states are set to start this afternoon and could go well into the night as representatives struggle to resolve their differences and clear a path to form the basis for further negotiations.
Points of contention remain on whether the law should govern how foundational models are developed in machine learning and whether AI can be used for live biometrics monitoring such as facial recognition.
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Forrester principal analyst Enza Iannopollo said: "The potential delay on the adoption of the EU AI ACT is bad news. In fact, the opposite is what one wishes for. The time to press on the accelerator on AI regulation is now. AI is evolving fast and it's already in the hands of millions of users.
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"Risks are real and we must address them quickly if we are to benefit from this technology. While discussions are happening in many countries about AI rules and safeguards, the European Union is best placed to produce effective change in the form of a risk-based, principle-led regulation, which will significantly influence the global scenario and inform future policy decisions.
"Undue delays on the adoption of the EU AI Act, however, threaten its ability to be an effective tool for mitigating AI risks and to produce the change that we, as a society, need urgently."
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But without a deal, the Commission is likely to postpone legislation owing to a lack of time, sacrificing the EU's position leading the world in regulating AI.
[5]AI won't take your job, might shrink your wages, European Central Bank reckons
[6]Getty's image-scraping sueball against Stability AI will go to trial in the UK
[7]Boffins devise 'universal backdoor' for image models to cause AI hallucinations
[8]Microsoft fixes Copilot multi-monitor issues in Windows 11 update
Alexandra van Huffelen, Dutch minister for digitalization, told Reuters: "The world is watching us: citizens, stakeholders, NGOs and the private sector want us to agree on a meaningful piece of legislation regarding AI, including general-purpose AI."
She said it was vital that national representatives reached a compromise on general-purpose AI to allow negotiations to proceed.
Others said taking the time to get the legislation right would be equally important. Trying to align a number of fundamental issues might be difficult in the time remaining.
"The AI regulation as a whole is not yet such that one can speak of being ready for a decision," said German digital minister Volker Wissing at the meeting of the European communications and transport ministers.
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He said there was still no agreement, even on central definitions, which needed to be resolved before the legislation could proceed.
While the EU strives to progress plans for legislation first mooted two years ago, the tech industry continues to introduce generative AI in new product releases across the board.
Questions remain over the provenance of the training data – some of which may be copyrighted material – and the reliability of the answers.
Meanwhile, Big Tech stalwarts such as IBM, Meta, Intel, Red Hat and Oracle rolled out their AI Alliance yesterday, seemingly trying to act on standards as a unit, with Linux Foundation, NASA and academia all having a seat at the table. However, as we pointed out [10]yesterday , OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, as well as the maker of the GPU grunt behind a lot of AI processing, Nvidia, are going their own way.
While the EU wants to lead the world in law, other jurisdictions such as [11]the UK and US are set to adopt a lighter touch to regulating AI. ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/29/ai_ecb_jobs/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/06/getty_sues_stability_ai/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/06/universal_backdoor_llm_image/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/05/microsoft_copilot_fixes_windows_11/
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[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/05/ai_alliance_opens_its_doors/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/uk_ai_regulation/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: The EU is not the centre of the universe.
And what is that killer app going to kill?
Re: The EU is not the centre of the universe.
Of course it isn't the center of the Universe. It's not pretending to be.
However, it is a market of over 350 million consumers. If you want to lock yourself out of that, feel free, but know that your competition might not.
First to legislate?!
I know how "first to market" can be a competitive advantage in commercial situations, but are they really so full of themselves to think they have to be the first to write the laws on something?
Is the hope to set expectations for other countries' own laws? Despite what the EU thinks, I doubt the US (e.g.) is going to decide to go along with Europe just because they got it out the door first.*
So now we've got legislation coming on a topic which has been developing for years (and months already at the level of hype we're dealing with) and it's important enough to miss bedtime for? We're not signing a war-ending treaty, people, go home and have a glass of wine and come back tomorrow.
I guess the upshot for the rest of the world is that the EU will show us what the worst regulatory cock-ups will be.
* (But compare CCPA and other non-European privacy-protection schemes, for instance: GDPR was significantly better thought out than I expect this to be, and jurisdictions passing "copycat" legislation had the benefit of watching what jappened with GDPR before nailing down their rules. So maybe this is for the best for everyone else.)
Re: First to legislate?!
Came here to write the same thing.
The best I can come up with is that the EU is probably a sufficiently large block that getting decent regulation out the door first will shape what the tech companies will do with their AI offerings and grasp the narrative early, before other countries that have more lax rules about what can happen with personal data shape it first.
Therefore it feels like it's not about what regulation the US puts in place after the EU sets its own regulation up, but to get the places working on various AIs to play ball appropriately.
The thing that's most interesting to me is how language affects availability of AI products. This isn't a situation like GDPR where an EU citizen is an EU citizen, this is a situation where an AI is probably going to be more fluent in English or Chinese than in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc etc. Now that the EU doesn't have a major (Sorry, Ireland) country where the official language is English, it's possible that non-english speakers will have been somewhat insulated from the majority of raw text data grabs used to train the LLMs.
tl;dr: EU is a big enough block that companies will probably think its worth it to work within reasonable EU regulations, but that depends on whether the e.g. Swedish market is big enough for an AI worth developing in that language in the first place.
Re: First to legislate?!
" a situation like GDPR where an EU citizen is an EU citizen "
Under the GDPR the person protected is "in the Union", not "an EU citizen". So anyone present in the Union (even temporarily) is protected, whatever their citizenship, while they are present in the territory. So it includes all transients, migrants and tourists.
Re: First to legislate?!
I have to agree that I don't see the point in this pseudo-race.
I don't care if you're first to legislate, I care that the laws you make a good. You can be the tenth to have made the law, if yours is the best, it's the one everyone should use.
Re: First to legislate?!
"I care that the laws you make a good."
Agreed.
"You can be the tenth to have made the law, if yours is the best, it's the one everyone should use. the ship will already have sailed"
Hmm
"While the EU wants to lead the world in law, other jurisdictions such as the UK and US are set to adopt a lighter touch to regulating AI."
Nice to see positives of brexit being mentioned on these pages.
Re: Hmm
What positives, harrumph?
Just in case it is not to be reported URPWND, and you are missing it ....
And if you think the likes of any NSA/UKGB Networking IntelAIgent type services, hailing from whatever other foreign and alien lands as would be/might be intriguing and interesting, are ever going to be bound by restrictive legislative regulations dreamt up by anyone ..... or any thing even ChatGPTish nowadays ...... then you really do have to wake up and smell the coffee/Java/Cocoa and get out more, for you're being left way behind in a diseased and exploding space place which all with any real common sense at all are happily racing away from to be led by forces and sources never ever before freely thought and realised almightily possible down and around everywhere on Earth.
The EU is not the centre of the universe.
Companies will migrate to lighter touch nations. The EU, big as it is, can be locked out of tech if necessary.
The next killer app may well be a way to wall your software into specific localities using ISP checks or (for apps) GPS. The ISP checks mean that software can be downloaded using a VPN, but once it starts working, it would turn itself off if it finds itself installed where it is banned from use. Depressing, eh?