Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

politico.eu

91–100 of 393 posts

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#91
post #5

Why the need to bring it under control? Control from what? It's not the AI that's the issue, it's the use of it that's the problem. The law shouldn't focus on the AI, for example: >The regulation, proposed by the Commission in 2021, was designed to ban some AI applications like social scoring Ban social scoring, not the AI, the tool doesn't matter. Would it be good if it was computed by hand on paper instead of throu…

What an absurd argument. Social scoring doesn't get computer by hand on paper because it isn't efficient to do so. Introduce automation and it suddenly becomes practical. Same with mass surveillance and a bunch of other stuff, eg scams: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35033971

the amplification factor works for the good and for the bad, so you need to focus just on the bad

That's just hand-waving. You have no plan for dealing with bad things, but you are worried about the loss of good things. This is not so different from saying you want to cash in on opportunity, the wholly predictable downsides of the opportunity are just someone else's problem. Guess what, nobody wants that problem so it just festers in proportion to the enthusiasm with which people chase the upside.

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#92
post #59
post #31

Are there any internationally relevant internet companies in Europe? Spotify comes to mind. Then .. I can't think of anything. No search engine. No browser. No operating system. No social network. No ecommerce company. No cloud computing platform. No financial services company. No transportation company. No travel company. No nothing. Except for a $20B music aggregator, there is not a single sector of the web where E…

It looks like you don't know much about Europe. Let's start with browser. Opera, made in Norway. Search Engine. Ecosia, Qwant. Social network: Mastodon. Operating system: are you kidding right? Linux, Linus Torvalds is from Finland. E-commerce company, just a few : Otto Group (bigger than uber, close in size to Baidu), Zalando, Booking.com, Digitec Galaxus (Swiss company, now selling in Switzerland, Austria, France,…

The comment was specifically talking about "internationally relevant" companies.

> It looks like you don't know much about Europe. > Let's start with browser. Opera, made in Norway.

Opera has 2 or 3% market share and these days is a Chromium fork. I don't even remember the last time I saw someone using Opera.

> Search Engine. Ecosia, Qwant.

Both of these are wrappers around Bing and regardless have less than 1% market share.

> Social network: Mastodon.

Despite some buzz on HN, it's less than 1% the size of Twitter.

> Operating system: are you kidding right? Linux, Linus Torvalds is from Finland.

Linus Torvalds moved to the US in 1996 and is now a US citizen. And isn't that kind of the point? Europe has no shortage of smart/entrepreneurial people, but they often come to the US so their projects or companies can reach their full potential instead of being stifled in the EU.

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#93
post #80
post #4

Good. Thanks to the EU I have to click "cookie question" every where I go. Thanks guys for wasting the limited time I have in life.

The complete lack of design standards is what kills the utility. They should all have 3 buttons: "accept all" or "reject all" or "customize", dead simple. Every time it's a different design, different button text, different options. Usually rejecting = multi layers of options. A perfect example of good intentions making bad policy.

I have hard time believing it is not intentional. I think Europe could easily enforce consistent UI which could be automated through ad blocker, but now they know that most companies would rather stop serving Europe than not track users for ad.

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#94
post #59
post #31

Are there any internationally relevant internet companies in Europe? Spotify comes to mind. Then .. I can't think of anything. No search engine. No browser. No operating system. No social network. No ecommerce company. No cloud computing platform. No financial services company. No transportation company. No travel company. No nothing. Except for a $20B music aggregator, there is not a single sector of the web where E…

It looks like you don't know much about Europe. Let's start with browser. Opera, made in Norway. Search Engine. Ecosia, Qwant. Social network: Mastodon. Operating system: are you kidding right? Linux, Linus Torvalds is from Finland. E-commerce company, just a few : Otto Group (bigger than uber, close in size to Baidu), Zalando, Booking.com, Digitec Galaxus (Swiss company, now selling in Switzerland, Austria, France,…

>It looks like you don't know much about Europe.

More like you don't know. Linus Torvalds is now an American citizen working in the US, like many other brilliant Europeans in the CS filed, and most importantly, the market cap[1] of the top US tech companies alone is greater than the combined tech sectors of EU, Switzerland, UK and Norway.

Most of the companies you listed have a relatively low market cap in comparison and are being squeezed by Chinese and US companies.

It's hard to underestimate just how big, wealthy and influential the US tech sector is. EU's tech sector is not in in the race by comparison. Sure, we have ASML as a local world leading champion, but that's just one single company, and even they are dependent on the US for the EUV licensing.

[1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#95
post #31

Are there any internationally relevant internet companies in Europe? Spotify comes to mind. Then .. I can't think of anything. No search engine. No browser. No operating system. No social network. No ecommerce company. No cloud computing platform. No financial services company. No transportation company. No travel company. No nothing. Except for a $20B music aggregator, there is not a single sector of the web where E…

You are limiting your investigation to consumer brands. Lots of codecs (which support video infrastructure) originate in Europe, look up Fraunhofer institute for example. Python, the world's most popular programming language, invented and managed by a European. The world wide web originates in Switzerland. So does Linux. A lot of the technology you use every day comes from Europe, it just isn't in the form of a consumer product.

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#96
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland is top of Europe in gun homicide rates with about 5x the EU average. You might not be making an example in support of an argument you think you're making ;P

TBF, much of that is down to suicides, as Switzerland has a much higher rate of suicide by gun than other countries. The general gun homicide rate once they're omitted isn't quite so crazy.

Same in the US, of course. Suicide by gun counted as 'gun violence' is the classic disingenuous deception. Remove those and gang violence (primarily against rival gangs), and the numbers don't look that scary, which is the issue for those with an agenda.

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#97
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat! I guess you’ll be advocating for whatever the next advancement in USB ports is becoming mandated as soon as it’s available, too?

Anything that reduces e-waste, yes.

Really, a brand new plug becomes available today, the EU mandates its usage and you think that reduces e-waste?

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#98
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking companies, not open-source projects, protocols or non-profits. Europe has a bigger population than the US, so listing competitors that are much smaller than their US equivalents is not a good sign. Those companies located in the EU are mostly owned by US and sometimes Chinese investors. The reverse is not true - most US companies are almost exclusively owned by Americans. Americans own around half of al…

> Americans own around half of all global financial wealth. Americans also had the privileged position of being located on a continent that has friendly neighbours, has extensive natural resources at its disposal, and half the continent did not get leveled during two world wars. Not to mention, most of the financial wealth is bound up in dollars (mainly because of the aforementioned historical reasons), which in term…

Your explanation for why Americans (or anyone else) are rich is incomplete.

I suggest you read this paper ("Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the Cotton Mills"):

https://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/210a/reading...

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the same argument as "ban murder, not guns"? Murder is illegal, yes, but fatalities are lower in places with gun control than places without.

I'm thinking of this more in the way of "printers got so good so now they have to add tracking dots when people try to print money or IDs". We need the same thing for AI generated imagery, video and text.

What stops me from removing that data manually?

Some AI tools are open source so nothing prevents me from modifying the code and removing the part that adds those watermarks.

Even closed source programs can be patched to remove that functionality.

Re: ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

#100
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking companies, not open-source projects, protocols or non-profits. Europe has a bigger population than the US, so listing competitors that are much smaller than their US equivalents is not a good sign. Those companies located in the EU are mostly owned by US and sometimes Chinese investors. The reverse is not true - most US companies are almost exclusively owned by Americans. Americans own around half of al…

> Americans own around half of all global financial wealth. Americans also had the privileged position of being located on a continent that has friendly neighbours, has extensive natural resources at its disposal, and half the continent did not get leveled during two world wars. Not to mention, most of the financial wealth is bound up in dollars (mainly because of the aforementioned historical reasons), which in term…

The EU before they were unioned spent much of their time colonizing the world for quite a few centuries, where has your empire(s) gold gone?

We were never on equal footing in the first place, to beg for it now shows you never planned on there being equal footing at all.

Post reply on HN