Europe has voted that it is going to decide the future of AI for its companies / researchers with new legislation! I’d say that’s a mildly bad thing and I’ll tell you why… But now the article…
The European Union’s parliament on Wednesday approved the world’s first major set of regulatory ground rules to govern the mediatized artificial intelligence at the forefront of tech investment.
The EU brokered provisional political consensus in early December, and it was then endorsed in the Parliament’s Wednesday session, with 523 votes in favour, 46 against and 49 votes not cast.
“Europe is NOW a global standard-setter in AI,” Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for internal market, wrote on X.
President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, described the act as trail-blazing, saying it would enable innovation, while safeguarding fundamental rights.
“Artificial intelligence is already very much part of our daily lives. Now, it will be part of our legislation too,” she wrote in a social media post.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/european-lawmakers-endorse-worlds-first-major-act-to-regulate-ai.html
Big picture, this is not all that good for Europe’s AI ambitions. Any kind of slowdown in development, even if it’s just a blip, will meaningfully impact Europe’s AI company’s timelines… putting them at a disadvantage to their non European competitors.
In essence ChatGPT5 gets to come out on time, while Mistral doesn’t. Any lead one non-European company has over European companies could lengthen. That could mean European companies falling out of the market entirely… which is the opposite of what Europe is trying to achieve. Europe just doesn’t want to be left behind America and China.
On top of that, who goes around verifying everyone’s private code is not a threat? How does that work? Do companies self certify or do regulators constantly interrupt company’s work to personally verify their code? And how will regulators even know what new code does? All of this will take time and resources that smaller companies most likely do not have, pushing them behind American and Chinese competitors.
Also it seems Europe has forgotten that companies can walk. Companies can move to the lower regulated areas of the world and set up shop. Which is exactly what is going to happen if the regulations are ultimately too harsh and burdensome.
Regulation just isn’t the best thing overall for AI development at this stage. AI has to be allowed to walk before it can run.
End of note.