9 ms·

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

127 points by FionnMc 3y ago

gambiting 3y ago
EU AI Act, not EU Act
- FionnMc 3y ago
  Edited, thanks!
endisneigh 3y 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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  it's not neutering, it's pest control
  - tenpies 3y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
  - neximo64 3y 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
    - aqme28 3y ago
      What do blink or webkit have to do with their comment? Regulations like this are designed to weed out scammers and charlatans and make the market better for everyone, hence "pest control." Think Theranos and the FDA.
    - aerhardt 3y ago
      I’m assuming you’ve benefitted to some extent from GDPR making it harder for companies to laugh their way to the bank with your data, even if you don’t live in the EU. And to be clear, I pretty much agree with your sentiment; the EU is overzealous and the US is light-years ahead in digital tech - and not only or mainly due to regulation. But let’s not pretend the US culture of “just do it and inshallah” is all rainbows and sunshine. With AI in particular there are existential or quasi-existential risks.
      - endisneigh 3y ago
        > With AI in particular there are quasi-existential risks lol, there really are not. It's hilarious to see the upper echelons of many government's unironically believing this. they should definitely keep an eye on the development, but as of yet it is not even close to an existential risk.
        aerhardt 3y ago
        Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell and other AI leaders are warning us that there are existential risks, if only due to the inevitable creation of autonomous murder machines by the military (Hinton and Russell are both worried about things beyond that, by the way). I’ll take their word for it and not only on the basis of their authority - they have very well put arguments. OpenAI is also playing it safe to some extent, maybe to please the general public and serve the org’s own interests, or maybe they are genuinely concerned about real safety threats, who knows. At any rate their actions don’t align with your discourse.
        localplume 3y ago
- oblio 3y ago
  The jury's still out on whether software is an unalloyed good.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Straw man. Nobody would say that. Is the jury still out on whether software does more good than harm?
    - chii 3y ago
      it depends on what people attribute as harm. I think the only harm an AI can do is the kind that come from errors (human or otherwise). Such as the boeing 737 Max, where people misuse software. The type of 'harm' that some people attribute to AI such as loss of economic utility, to me, is not harm. And legislating that away is dangerous.
    - oblio 3y ago
      Some categories, for sure. We have no idea about the impact of AI. It's almost like the EU is regulating stuff that's really scary.
      - brookst 3y ago
        Absolutely. The EU's regulatory posture is to prohibit things that could cause harm in the future. It's very consumer-first, risk-avoidant, and a fair way to do things. For someone who's more willing to accept risk and who prefers regulating bad outcomes rather than just scary things that could possibly have bad outcomes but which nobody can predict, it looks over-protective. But I fully support the EU's right to take a wait-and-see approach and gradually accept AI if it goes well for the rest of the world. Europe hasn't been at the forefront of any tech or cultural change for centuries, and seems to be getting along just fine.
        oblio 3y ago
        > Europe hasn't been at the forefront of any tech or cultural change for centuries, and seems to be getting along just fine. "Centuries" is mega hyperbole when you look at physics, chemistry, etc, etc up until at least 1930.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  Yes, that's exactly how it turned out with China who have been doing this much longer..
- lm28469 3y 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
  - zeroonetwothree 3y 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.
    - lm28469 3y ago
      > DDT is an endocrine disruptor. > DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO > "research has shown that exposure to DDT at amounts that would be needed in malaria control might cause preterm birth and early weaning ... toxicological evidence shows endocrine-disrupting properties; human data also indicate possible disruption in semen quality, menstruation, gestational length, and duration of lactation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Human_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Human_health
  - bionhoward 3y 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
    - lillecarl 3y ago
      There's also the opioid epidemic and amphetamine epidemic. They're pretty hard to justify in my opinion. Not that other countries don't have issues, but it's less common in democracies that that these things are pushed onto people by the govt through lobbying.
- ChuckNorris89 3y 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.
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    Why is it that every time someone makes a poorly reasoned argument steeped in emotion there are Nazis involved?
  - criley2 3y 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.
    - zirgs 3y ago
      Surveillance capitalism isn't necessary for society to function. I can live just fine without google, fb and tiktok serving me ads. I can store my files in the cloud just fine without microsoft and google scanning them. Navigation apps work just fine without uploading location history to google. A lot of those so-called "innovations" aren't necessary.
- simion314 3y 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 3y ago
    It’s not illegal though. That’s the point, is it not?
    - simion314 3y ago
      It is undecided/unclear what is legal or not, I am not an american so I am not the one that should explain this. But Microsoft trained their coding AI with GPL software but not with proprietary software impaling that they can risc screwing Open Source but not the paying GitHub customers or not sure why they did not used their own internal proprietary code. Open AI trained with the entire inernet, books, ignored any license copyright cponcerns. Stability.ai also trained with lot of stuff. Adobe trained only with stuff they have licenses. So as we can see until an USA judge decides how to interpret the existing laws then stuff are not sure, some companies take the risks other take less risks, others no risk. But if USA some other judge in a superior court my decide something else, so IMO USA also needs to take a decision and not let FUD (deserved or not) about AI to spread. I seen many do not know that the issue ChatGPT had in Italy was about a data leak. There are laws on what you do when this happens, probably are similar laws in USA , maybe in USA is harder to start a investigation or maybe there were some lobbying involved.
- can16358p 3y 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)
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Reducing everything, technology, economy and society, to software tech is such a pseudo-SV bubble thing, it is getting boring by now.
  - smarx007 3y ago
    I didn't see any effect from GDPR on tech talent migration. Any source on this?!
    - icepat 3y ago
      This, to me, sounds like personal opinion. Many developers in the EEA, while agreeing that it causes extra work, like the spirit of GDPR. The attitude (a generalisation) towards the American way of working with private data, is generally that it's unethical. It's not hard to find developers who are happy to, and want to, work within the framework.
    - robswc 3y ago
      He probably means its just another factor in why there's very few startups/innovative companies in Europe. I did consulting and for a fair amount of projects where we had to block all European traffic while GDPR compliance was sorted out. There was almost never anything we had to actually do/change but the threat was looming and it was easier to just not take the risk.
      - smarx007 3y ago
        That's a totally legit way of "complying" with GDPR. An unacceptable way to do this is to present a consent screen that restricts access if consent is denied but allows access otherwise (looking at you, Washington Post, but at least they provide an option to pay for a privacy-respecting experience). Cf §43.2 https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/
- aqme28 3y ago
  What about these regulations is neutering? They sound pretty reasonable I thought.
- suction 3y 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.
- AndrewKemendo 3y 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
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    How many of those “psychopathic ideas” do Europeans end up benefiting from once they mature?
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      Sorry just to be clear, are you attempting to make the Tuskegee vaccine argument?
roenxi 3y 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.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  Nazism is in fact banned in many European countries.
  - dandellion 3y 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.
  - galleywest200 3y ago
    That may be true, but those countries still see the "parades" by these groups. Its "banned" but not gone.
    - eimrine 3y ago
      Are you Russian propagandist? They are probably the only actor nowadays who use to name some groups of European people as nazi with emphasis on some parades. Why not to name any group which fits what you are claiming - for letting us to see your guts without asks for some extra clarifications?
      - logicchains 3y ago
m00dy 3y ago
Invoker here, welcome to my network, it is decentralised and permissionless.
lionkor 3y ago
Is this not an announcement of an announcement?
- FionnMc 3y 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 3y ago
I always feel that the EU protects the people, while others seem to care about profits only.
- lopis 3y ago
  Just read through the comments on this thread. Most people only care that EU "fall behind" the US, no matter the societal cost.
  - nologic01 3y 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 3y ago
  That is exactly what they want you to feel about them.
- zeroonetwothree 3y 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 3y 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.
- smarx007 3y 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.
  - jiggywiggy 3y 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.
    - sambeau 3y ago
      Laws can be iterated on. Uncertainty, red tape and legal fees all seem like worth-while brakes on a potentially dangerous industry. Better to be safe than sorry.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        > Laws can be iterated on. For Americans, this concept seems to be almost alien given the (at least from an European POV) more or less constant gridlock between House, Senate, Presidency and whatever the 50 states make out of that regarding enforcement. Or, to put it differently, they prefer the Wild West and barely self-regulated markets because they have completely lost any trust in government to create and modernize laws - a viewpoint that does make sense given the ridiculous age of key players in Congress. Feinstein is 90 years old, both likely Presidential candidates are over 75, Senators' median age is 65. How can anyone expect these people to even understand modern issues?! I think this is also the cause why so many American companies failed or have massive difficulties entering the European market. They simply cannot think that other countries have governments that actually govern and regulatory agencies that don't take it well if foreign companies try to buy their way out of trouble.
dhfbshfbu4u3 3y 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.
- smarx007 3y ago
  What? Optinions from public bodies on the first drafts started coming in the summer of 2021 [1]. [1]: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/documents/ https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/documents/
- themitigating 3y ago
  Do people also win or can only one party win?
  - dhfbshfbu4u3 3y ago
    What are the people “winning” in this case?
golemotron 3y 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 3y 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.
  - golemotron 3y ago
    Get back to me in 20 years.
nologic01 3y 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.
- smarx007 3y 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".
  - nologic01 3y 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.
    - smarx007 3y ago
      To me, a privacy regulation that focuses not on merely collecting and protecting private data (HIPAA and friends), but instead on purposes of its use is very much a new model. For example, Amazon doesn't need consent to process and store your home address, but only as long as they use it to deliver goods you order and nothing else. I think it's more of a problem with companies who are fighting to keep the old model (thus, asking for consent where it's not needed just in case they want to do something privacy-disrespectful with it in the future – you can totally deny consent and keep using the service) and consumers not understanding this (and thus, not voting with their feet). But I see GDPR enforcement every day (I donate to https://noyb.eu/en https://noyb.eu/en and recommend you to do the same if possible), people fighting non-free consent etc. – I expect in a few more years the landscape will be better understood.
wongarsu 3y 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)
- konschubert 3y 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
  - gumballindie 3y 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.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      Big companies can afford regulations. They will do just fine with writing all the compliance documents But Small companies can’t afford the compliance overhead. And big companies can only develop out of small companies. So they will develop elsewhere
NickHoff 3y 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.
cmilton 3y 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.
- soulofmischief 3y 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.
  - cmilton 3y 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.
    - DangitBobby 3y ago
      Most of the law restricts or prohibits mundane abuses of ML that have already happened, and calls for people developing and deploying AI to attest they are doing their due diligence.
  - renjimen 3y 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
    - soulofmischief 3y ago
      You're correct, I live in the USA.
- ttjjtt 3y 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.
gumballindie 3y 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.
- endisneigh 3y 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.
  - gumballindie 3y 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.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      I don't disagree with you, but many people on HN think digital information should be free, just sayin'
sgt101 3y ago
Missing : - statutory watermarking of output - disclosure of training data - under age & vulnerability limitations - limitation of indiscriminate publication
lvl102 3y 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.
- hef19898 3y 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.
  - lvl102 3y 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.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Numbers for those 85% please, and include material deliveries as well, ok? By now so, the meme of Germany funding Putin by virtue buying gas from Russia is as stale and old as the "they lied about masks" one. Old enough to just not adress anymore.
  - localplume 3y ago
    [dead]
r2vcap 3y 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.
- renjimen 3y 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.
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    And who exactly do productivity gains benefit?
    - dorchadas 3y ago
      Not the populace, that's for damn sure. The uber-wealthy who capture even more of the wealth and then use whatever legal tricks they can to avoid paying taxes on it, all while weakening the power power of the other classes.
bitL 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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).
  - renjimen 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
aqme28 3y 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?
- robswc 3y 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.
  - aqme28 3y ago
    Completely agree, but that’s not the same as saying that these organizations do not provide benefit
- jkeisling 3y 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".
timwaagh 3y 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_sh 3y 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.
  - timwaagh 3y 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 3y 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.)
    - input_sh 3y ago
      But Bard is not available in way more "traditional" countries than just the EU. https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en Canada, Brazil, WB6 (Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo), Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Moldova, Ukraine, the ones under US sanctions (Syria, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Belarus, China)... plus 27 EU countries. That's 46 right there, and I probably missed a few. But hey, gotta get those numbers up, so it's available to all of literally zero people living in Heard Island and McDonald Islands or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
deleted 3y ago
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Mortiffer 3y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35914705
otikik 3y ago
I hope they put something about user interface there. The “EU IA UI” act.
polski-g 3y ago
Thank god for the First Amendment: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
jcarrano 3y 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.

127 points by FionnMc 3y ago

gambiting 3y ago

EU AI Act, not EU Act

FionnMc 3y ago
Edited, thanks!

endisneigh 3y 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.

deleted 3y ago
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ClumsyPilot 3y ago
it's not neutering, it's pest control
- tenpies 3y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
- neximo64 3y 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
  - aqme28 3y ago
    What do blink or webkit have to do with their comment? Regulations like this are designed to weed out scammers and charlatans and make the market better for everyone, hence "pest control." Think Theranos and the FDA.
  - aerhardt 3y ago
    I’m assuming you’ve benefitted to some extent from GDPR making it harder for companies to laugh their way to the bank with your data, even if you don’t live in the EU. And to be clear, I pretty much agree with your sentiment; the EU is overzealous and the US is light-years ahead in digital tech - and not only or mainly due to regulation. But let’s not pretend the US culture of “just do it and inshallah” is all rainbows and sunshine. With AI in particular there are existential or quasi-existential risks.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      > With AI in particular there are quasi-existential risks lol, there really are not. It's hilarious to see the upper echelons of many government's unironically believing this. they should definitely keep an eye on the development, but as of yet it is not even close to an existential risk.
      - aerhardt 3y ago
        Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell and other AI leaders are warning us that there are existential risks, if only due to the inevitable creation of autonomous murder machines by the military (Hinton and Russell are both worried about things beyond that, by the way). I’ll take their word for it and not only on the basis of their authority - they have very well put arguments. OpenAI is also playing it safe to some extent, maybe to please the general public and serve the org’s own interests, or maybe they are genuinely concerned about real safety threats, who knows. At any rate their actions don’t align with your discourse.
        localplume 3y ago
oblio 3y ago
The jury's still out on whether software is an unalloyed good.
- brookst 3y ago
  Straw man. Nobody would say that. Is the jury still out on whether software does more good than harm?
  - chii 3y ago
    it depends on what people attribute as harm. I think the only harm an AI can do is the kind that come from errors (human or otherwise). Such as the boeing 737 Max, where people misuse software. The type of 'harm' that some people attribute to AI such as loss of economic utility, to me, is not harm. And legislating that away is dangerous.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Some categories, for sure. We have no idea about the impact of AI. It's almost like the EU is regulating stuff that's really scary.
    - brookst 3y ago
      Absolutely. The EU's regulatory posture is to prohibit things that could cause harm in the future. It's very consumer-first, risk-avoidant, and a fair way to do things. For someone who's more willing to accept risk and who prefers regulating bad outcomes rather than just scary things that could possibly have bad outcomes but which nobody can predict, it looks over-protective. But I fully support the EU's right to take a wait-and-see approach and gradually accept AI if it goes well for the rest of the world. Europe hasn't been at the forefront of any tech or cultural change for centuries, and seems to be getting along just fine.
      - oblio 3y ago
        > Europe hasn't been at the forefront of any tech or cultural change for centuries, and seems to be getting along just fine. "Centuries" is mega hyperbole when you look at physics, chemistry, etc, etc up until at least 1930.
stefan_ 3y ago
Yes, that's exactly how it turned out with China who have been doing this much longer..
lm28469 3y 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
- zeroonetwothree 3y 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.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    > DDT is an endocrine disruptor. > DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO > "research has shown that exposure to DDT at amounts that would be needed in malaria control might cause preterm birth and early weaning ... toxicological evidence shows endocrine-disrupting properties; human data also indicate possible disruption in semen quality, menstruation, gestational length, and duration of lactation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Human_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Human_health
- bionhoward 3y 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
  - lillecarl 3y ago
    There's also the opioid epidemic and amphetamine epidemic. They're pretty hard to justify in my opinion. Not that other countries don't have issues, but it's less common in democracies that that these things are pushed onto people by the govt through lobbying.
ChuckNorris89 3y 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.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Why is it that every time someone makes a poorly reasoned argument steeped in emotion there are Nazis involved?
- criley2 3y 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.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Surveillance capitalism isn't necessary for society to function. I can live just fine without google, fb and tiktok serving me ads. I can store my files in the cloud just fine without microsoft and google scanning them. Navigation apps work just fine without uploading location history to google. A lot of those so-called "innovations" aren't necessary.
simion314 3y 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 3y ago
  It’s not illegal though. That’s the point, is it not?
  - simion314 3y ago
    It is undecided/unclear what is legal or not, I am not an american so I am not the one that should explain this. But Microsoft trained their coding AI with GPL software but not with proprietary software impaling that they can risc screwing Open Source but not the paying GitHub customers or not sure why they did not used their own internal proprietary code. Open AI trained with the entire inernet, books, ignored any license copyright cponcerns. Stability.ai also trained with lot of stuff. Adobe trained only with stuff they have licenses. So as we can see until an USA judge decides how to interpret the existing laws then stuff are not sure, some companies take the risks other take less risks, others no risk. But if USA some other judge in a superior court my decide something else, so IMO USA also needs to take a decision and not let FUD (deserved or not) about AI to spread. I seen many do not know that the issue ChatGPT had in Italy was about a data leak. There are laws on what you do when this happens, probably are similar laws in USA , maybe in USA is harder to start a investigation or maybe there were some lobbying involved.
can16358p 3y 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)
- hef19898 3y ago
  Reducing everything, technology, economy and society, to software tech is such a pseudo-SV bubble thing, it is getting boring by now.
- smarx007 3y ago
  I didn't see any effect from GDPR on tech talent migration. Any source on this?!
  - icepat 3y ago
    This, to me, sounds like personal opinion. Many developers in the EEA, while agreeing that it causes extra work, like the spirit of GDPR. The attitude (a generalisation) towards the American way of working with private data, is generally that it's unethical. It's not hard to find developers who are happy to, and want to, work within the framework.
  - robswc 3y ago
    He probably means its just another factor in why there's very few startups/innovative companies in Europe. I did consulting and for a fair amount of projects where we had to block all European traffic while GDPR compliance was sorted out. There was almost never anything we had to actually do/change but the threat was looming and it was easier to just not take the risk.
    - smarx007 3y ago
      That's a totally legit way of "complying" with GDPR. An unacceptable way to do this is to present a consent screen that restricts access if consent is denied but allows access otherwise (looking at you, Washington Post, but at least they provide an option to pay for a privacy-respecting experience). Cf §43.2 https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/
aqme28 3y ago
What about these regulations is neutering? They sound pretty reasonable I thought.
suction 3y 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.
AndrewKemendo 3y 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
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  How many of those “psychopathic ideas” do Europeans end up benefiting from once they mature?
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Sorry just to be clear, are you attempting to make the Tuskegee vaccine argument?

roenxi 3y 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.

School-Cotton 3y ago
Nazism is in fact banned in many European countries.
- dandellion 3y 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.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  That may be true, but those countries still see the "parades" by these groups. Its "banned" but not gone.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    Are you Russian propagandist? They are probably the only actor nowadays who use to name some groups of European people as nazi with emphasis on some parades. Why not to name any group which fits what you are claiming - for letting us to see your guts without asks for some extra clarifications?
    - logicchains 3y ago

m00dy 3y ago

Invoker here, welcome to my network, it is decentralised and permissionless.

lionkor 3y ago

Is this not an announcement of an announcement?

FionnMc 3y 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 3y ago

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

lopis 3y ago
Just read through the comments on this thread. Most people only care that EU "fall behind" the US, no matter the societal cost.
- nologic01 3y 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 3y ago
That is exactly what they want you to feel about them.
zeroonetwothree 3y 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 3y 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.

smarx007 3y 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.
- jiggywiggy 3y 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.
  - sambeau 3y ago
    Laws can be iterated on. Uncertainty, red tape and legal fees all seem like worth-while brakes on a potentially dangerous industry. Better to be safe than sorry.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > Laws can be iterated on. For Americans, this concept seems to be almost alien given the (at least from an European POV) more or less constant gridlock between House, Senate, Presidency and whatever the 50 states make out of that regarding enforcement. Or, to put it differently, they prefer the Wild West and barely self-regulated markets because they have completely lost any trust in government to create and modernize laws - a viewpoint that does make sense given the ridiculous age of key players in Congress. Feinstein is 90 years old, both likely Presidential candidates are over 75, Senators' median age is 65. How can anyone expect these people to even understand modern issues?! I think this is also the cause why so many American companies failed or have massive difficulties entering the European market. They simply cannot think that other countries have governments that actually govern and regulatory agencies that don't take it well if foreign companies try to buy their way out of trouble.

dhfbshfbu4u3 3y 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.

smarx007 3y ago
What? Optinions from public bodies on the first drafts started coming in the summer of 2021 [1]. [1]: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/documents/ https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/documents/
themitigating 3y ago
Do people also win or can only one party win?
- dhfbshfbu4u3 3y ago
  What are the people “winning” in this case?

golemotron 3y 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 3y 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.
- golemotron 3y ago
  Get back to me in 20 years.

nologic01 3y 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.

smarx007 3y 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".
- nologic01 3y 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.
  - smarx007 3y ago
    To me, a privacy regulation that focuses not on merely collecting and protecting private data (HIPAA and friends), but instead on purposes of its use is very much a new model. For example, Amazon doesn't need consent to process and store your home address, but only as long as they use it to deliver goods you order and nothing else. I think it's more of a problem with companies who are fighting to keep the old model (thus, asking for consent where it's not needed just in case they want to do something privacy-disrespectful with it in the future – you can totally deny consent and keep using the service) and consumers not understanding this (and thus, not voting with their feet). But I see GDPR enforcement every day (I donate to https://noyb.eu/en https://noyb.eu/en and recommend you to do the same if possible), people fighting non-free consent etc. – I expect in a few more years the landscape will be better understood.

wongarsu 3y 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)

konschubert 3y 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
- gumballindie 3y 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.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    Big companies can afford regulations. They will do just fine with writing all the compliance documents But Small companies can’t afford the compliance overhead. And big companies can only develop out of small companies. So they will develop elsewhere

NickHoff 3y 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.

cmilton 3y 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.

soulofmischief 3y 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.
- cmilton 3y 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.
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
    Most of the law restricts or prohibits mundane abuses of ML that have already happened, and calls for people developing and deploying AI to attest they are doing their due diligence.
- renjimen 3y 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
  - soulofmischief 3y ago
    You're correct, I live in the USA.
ttjjtt 3y 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.

gumballindie 3y 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.

endisneigh 3y 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.
- gumballindie 3y 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.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    I don't disagree with you, but many people on HN think digital information should be free, just sayin'

sgt101 3y ago

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

lvl102 3y 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.

hef19898 3y 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.
- lvl102 3y 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.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Numbers for those 85% please, and include material deliveries as well, ok? By now so, the meme of Germany funding Putin by virtue buying gas from Russia is as stale and old as the "they lied about masks" one. Old enough to just not adress anymore.
- localplume 3y ago
  [dead]

r2vcap 3y 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.

renjimen 3y 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.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  And who exactly do productivity gains benefit?
  - dorchadas 3y ago
    Not the populace, that's for damn sure. The uber-wealthy who capture even more of the wealth and then use whatever legal tricks they can to avoid paying taxes on it, all while weakening the power power of the other classes.

bitL 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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).
- renjimen 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.

aqme28 3y 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?

robswc 3y 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.
- aqme28 3y ago
  Completely agree, but that’s not the same as saying that these organizations do not provide benefit
jkeisling 3y 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".

timwaagh 3y 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_sh 3y 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.
- timwaagh 3y 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 3y 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.)
  - input_sh 3y ago
    But Bard is not available in way more "traditional" countries than just the EU. https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en Canada, Brazil, WB6 (Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo), Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Moldova, Ukraine, the ones under US sanctions (Syria, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Belarus, China)... plus 27 EU countries. That's 46 right there, and I probably missed a few. But hey, gotta get those numbers up, so it's available to all of literally zero people living in Heard Island and McDonald Islands or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

deleted 3y ago

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Mortiffer 3y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35914705

otikik 3y ago

I hope they put something about user interface there. The “EU IA UI” act.

polski-g 3y ago

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

jcarrano 3y 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.