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)
The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
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Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#32The 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'…
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.
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#33The 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.
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 sc…
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.
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#34The 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'…
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.
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.
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#35They 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.
What? Optinions from public bodies on the first drafts started coming in the summer of 2021 [1].
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#36The 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'…
> ...remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces, biometric categorisation systems (e.g. categorizing by gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, political orientation) and the use of AI for predictive policing.
> AI systems which can influence voters in political campaigns and by use of suggestion systems on very large platforms...
> New transparency and risk assessment requirements for providers of (generative) foundation models like GTP.
> Clarified exemptions for research.
Putting these kinds of restrictions in place is absolutely a good thing. While they might not get everything right, this is a step in the right direction. Our laws and understanding as a society has been lagging behind technological development for decades now. That fact has enabled a large amount of exploitation to take place, which has (in the last decade especially) had a large hand in massively undermining our democracies.
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#37AI 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.
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#38What 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 th…
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".
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: The EU AI act is coming, this time for real probably
#40In 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 t…
The EU is more in line with China on this one, I'm all for letting other societies try this cultural nuclear weapon on themselves first. See what sticks.
I feel that's the way things have been going culturally/economically in France/Germany: Look at the world (usually the US but now also China more), see what is useful/competitive, adopt it in moderation. So this stance is extremely in line with the usual approach, in my opinion.