The EU Hates AI

Regulators must just be so annoyed with the pace of new tech sensations. Sitting around for 15 years nobody bothers them then this whole "crypto" thing comes around and they get added to a committee where they have to decide whether or not it's illegal for Paris Hilton to say "Bored Ape" on live TV. That finally ends. Now the Terminator is teaming up with this ChatGPT thing that their grandkids use to do their homework and their history major assistant is trying to understand what "LLM" means. Exhausting.

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Across the pond (cheeky way of saying in Europe) regulators out of Brussels are deciding on what the rules are for AI companies and there is a 0% chance they get it right. I do generally think that there should be some rules, but it's hard to imagine a positive outcome.

Have you ever watched one of the government hearings? Whether it's about social media, crypto, or now AI - it's always a bit disheartening.

The technology is moving too fast for politicians to educate themselves on things enough to regulate them intelligently. Even if they did get the right rule out there things would likely change fast enough that they needed new rules again.

As software moves faster and faster in general this will only get worse. In the meantime, regulators do have to try to do something.

What this looks like in Europe is a set of rules that OpenAI's Sam Altman warns could cause them to cease operating in Europe all together. A few things on the table that would make it unworkable:

• Publish summaries of copyrighted data used to train models which would open them up to legal action from creators.
• Responsibility for how their AI systems are used, even if they have no control over the particular applications the technology has been embedded in.

One commentator also mentioned in the article from the Financial Times the incentive misalignment given the lack of EU leaders in the AI race:

He added Brussels “will act without reference to reality, as it has before” and that, without any European companies leading the charge in advanced AI, the bloc’s politicians have little incentive to support the growth of the industry. “It will basically be European regulators regulating American companies, as it has been throughout the IT era.” Full article here.