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Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

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Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#61

Post by troupo »

Simon321 wrote: post #40

Seems to EU is determined to cripple their AI industry at all costs, we already have so little technology companies... Foundation models are labelled as 'high risk'! In my opinion this is way too premature... this would cripple open source AI as well... > While the act includes open source exceptions for traditional machine learning models, it expressly forbids safe-harbor provisions for open source generative system…

Ah, the industry is out in force spreading FUD thick and early.

Here's what EU AI Act is actually about: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/the-truth-about-the-eu-ac...

And no wonder the (mostly American) AI industry is so outraged by it: it requires accountability.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#62

Post by mrtksn »

Simon321 wrote: post #56
mrtksn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU crippling innovation through regulation is a know mem3 but can you actually name regulation, which crippled innovation? It's usually the Americans who are freaking out over this, I assume based on their local experience. It’s the same thing about the unions or any other stuff that works completely differently in EU and USA. it cuts both ways, European understanding of the American healthcare system is also a caric…

I am from the EU, not an American. I am not anti regulation in general. An example of where this has happened before was with GMO's: > In 2006, the World Trade Organization concluded that the EU moratorium, which had been in effect from 1999 to 2004,[12] had violated international trade rules.[13][14] We had a moratorium for years and even now we have the most stringent GMO regulations in the world. This crippled GMO…

> This crippled GMO research in Europe.

Did it?

But yes, if something is banned then its probably bad for business and innovation around it. Europe is probably missing out on carcinogenic food additive innovations too. Okay, GMO's are not banned by EU but they are banned by some of the largest EU countries and if those countries fell behind in GMO tech, maybe it's due to the local bans and not the EU regulations?

EU isn't into banning AI though. Regulating doesn't mean banning, consider EU's digital markets act - EU didn't ban AppStore but put a requirement on device manufacturers to allow other AppStores. When EU regulated the EV charging ports, it did not ban EVs, but put a requirement to have unified plug.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#63

Post by troupo »

gyudin wrote: post #10
RamblingCTO wrote: post #3

I was actually fearing something very stupid coming from the EU, but the requirements/questions asked (if it's only that from the table) are fairly ok!

350 pages of ramblings that nobody who was voting for this act hasn't actually read?

Or of an actual sensible legislation that requires accountability from AI development and deployment: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/the-truth-about-the-eu-ac...

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#64

Post by csmpltn »

senko wrote: post #11
csmpltn wrote: post #8

Tracking "Energy" for what is otherwise a compressed version of the entire internet at your disposal seems so green-washed and disingenuous. Whatever "Energy" consumption those models have - it's peanuts compared to the alternatives.

It's still an useful metric, why not measure and report it? Especially for models that are being deployed on mobile phones or desktop apps. And looking ahead, the future where IoT devices will have a mini-neural-net is not inconceivable. One of the lessons from the crypto fiasco is that, if unchecked, the energy requirements can baloon to stratospheric heights.

> "It's still an useful metric, why not measure and report it?"

What is it actually useful for?

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#65

Post by hdkrgr »

londons_explore wrote: post #35
hdkrgr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the chance to talk to a staffer of one of the MEPs leading the political negotiations in EU parlament committee a few weeks ago. His take was that the pro-tech/pro-business parties conceded the 'AI users must track their energy use'-point to the Greens in the latest draft (which is the parliament's counterproposal to earlier drafts by the commission --think EU executive-- and council --think governments of the…

The problem is, as soon as it's a law, there will be some official way to calculate it, penalties for misreporting, perhaps even a professional who must audit the energy use. Etc. Getting that number gets expensive! Whereas if it is a company voluntarily reporting it, the number would just be number of GPUs * wattage of GPUs / tokens generated past year = energy per token.

I agree and share this concern in principle.

But... have you seen the state of GDPR enforcement? Anyone who made an honest effort is fine. I don't know of any GDPR enforcement action where the indicted company wasn't blatantly and willfully violating or ignoring the law.

FWIW, everything I've seen from regulators and the legislators involved in the nitty-gritty of the act seems to suggest that most of them are really smart people who know what they don't know. They know that AI is quickly evolving and the draft of the law goes out of its way to _not_ be too specific about _how_ to comply. E.g., I would not expect the EU (or national regulators) to bring down 'one right way' to report energy consumption.

The fact that they COULD still bothers me.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#66

Post by hdkrgr »

senko wrote: post #50
hdkrgr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure... but maybe the GPU is sitting idle 40% of the time while still consuming 200W. Should I have to break this idle energy consumption down onto actual use (assuming the server/gpu is only used for this one model)? I guess it would make sense, but... WHO should do this and then continually update the model documentation when idle rates or the hardware changes?

The organizations that release the models already provide (brag about) their model performance. They could simply include in the same report the info about the energy spent doing the training/finetuning/inference, per X tokens. This doesn't necessarily measure every use, just "manufacturer's spec", the same you get for eg energy class for house appliances (at least in the EU). Nobody goes around measuring refrigerato…

I agree, that seems reasonable!

I was referring more to the users of such a system (what the AI Act would call a 'deployer'). They may have significantly less expertise but could still be required to track real-time energy use. Of course, simply referring to the 'energy label' by the provider could be a viable solution.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#67

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

lewhoo wrote: post #44
gyudin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

350 pages of ramblings that nobody who was voting for this act hasn't actually read?

Yeah but a two-page font size 20 alternative proposal would introduce a thousand obvious and another ten thousand non-obvious loopholes, much like that double negative of yours. (I'm not trying to be a grammar Nazi, English isn't my native lang either) One of the reasons why the Constitution of USA has to be interpreted constantly is because it's relatively short and vague.

There is this weird and very real similarity between code and law. I realised this when I had to read up on some laws that were relevant to me, and found them shockingly easy to understand despite never having studied law.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#68

Post by bathtub365 »

Simon321 wrote: post #47
v7n wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion it's about time to clarify rules and standards for automated systems that can for example kill someone if their output is incorrect.

ChatGPT and stable diffusion are killing people now? I think incorrect output of regular software is actually killing people but we don't need a license to write code.

Maybe we should, for high risk applications.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#69

Post by AbrahamParangi »

bathtub365 wrote: post #68
Simon321 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT and stable diffusion are killing people now? I think incorrect output of regular software is actually killing people but we don't need a license to write code.

Maybe we should, for high risk applications.

You think software is bad now? Imagine if the world got 1% as much practice writing software because it was a licensed profession.

Re: Do Foundation Model Providers Comply with the EU AI Act?

#70

Post by AbrahamParangi »

I expect that the EU will have enough regulation to make EU native AI companies comparatively uncompetitive but not actually enforce those regulations because of the economic and political disadvantages of doing so. Seems like the worst of all worlds to me but what do I know.
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