European Lawmakers Approve Landmark AI Legislation 29
European lawmakers approved the world's most comprehensive legislation yet on AI (non-paywalled link), setting out sweeping rules for developers of AI systems and new restrictions on how the technology can be used. From a report: The European Parliament on Wednesday voted to give final approval to the law after reaching a political agreement last December with European Union member states. The rules, which are set to take effect gradually over several years, ban certain AI uses, introduce new transparency rules and require risk assessments for AI systems that are deemed high-risk. The law comes amid a broader global debate about the future of AI and its potential risks and benefits as the technology is increasingly adopted by companies and consumers. Elon Musk recently sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman for allegedly breaking the company's founding agreement by prioritizing profit over AI's benefits for humanity. Altman has said AI should be developed with great caution and offers immense commercial possibilities.
The new legislation applies to AI products in the EU market, regardless of where they were developed. It is backed by fines of up to 7% of a company's worldwide revenue. The AI Act is "the first regulation in the world that is putting a clear path towards a safe and human-centric development of AI," said Brando Benifei, an EU lawmaker from Italy who helped lead negotiations on the law. The law still needs final approval from EU member states, but that process is expected to be a formality since they already gave the legislation their political endorsement. While the law only applies in the EU it is expected to have a global impact because large AI companies are unlikely to want to forgo access to the bloc, which has a population of about 448 million people. Other jurisdictions could also use the new law as a model for their AI regulations, contributing to a wider ripple effect.
The new legislation applies to AI products in the EU market, regardless of where they were developed. It is backed by fines of up to 7% of a company's worldwide revenue. The AI Act is "the first regulation in the world that is putting a clear path towards a safe and human-centric development of AI," said Brando Benifei, an EU lawmaker from Italy who helped lead negotiations on the law. The law still needs final approval from EU member states, but that process is expected to be a formality since they already gave the legislation their political endorsement. While the law only applies in the EU it is expected to have a global impact because large AI companies are unlikely to want to forgo access to the bloc, which has a population of about 448 million people. Other jurisdictions could also use the new law as a model for their AI regulations, contributing to a wider ripple effect.
Illegal AI training PC (Score:4, Insightful)
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So, laws against copyright violation is terrible? Is everything you watch and listen to stolen?
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laws against copyright violation is terrible?
Objectively, yes. Most copyright laws are terrible for the vast majority of people. They only serve the corporations who bought out or contracted the copyrights from the artists, or in rare cases the artists themselves. They never, ever, in any way benefit the consumers of the copyrighted products. They lead to anti-piracy measures that do nothing but make the experience worse for the consumer, they increase the cost of products and services through the imagined loss of revenue to hypothetical pirates, and
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"For the vast majority of people"? How about writers and artists? How about MY NOVELS and other fiction? You think it's ok that I don't get paid for my work?
And don't claim I don't understand - not with a B.Sc in CIS, and almost 40 years as a programmer and *Nix sysadmin.
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And don't claim I don't understand - not with a B.Sc in CIS, and almost 40 years as a programmer and *Nix sysadmin.
Well there's your problem right there. You're a dumb old boomer who thinks things still work like they did 40 years ago, and that your B.Sc from before the internet existed matters in the modern world.
Yes, even for novelists and artists, the copyright system fucks them over. You don't hold all the copyright to your work if you use a publisher. You don't hold all the copyright to your work if your art is distributed by another company. It still just feeds the corporations taking the risk and management a
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I'm not so sure it's necessary, since people harming each other is already illegal - whether or not a person uses a computer to accelerate their bad decision-making is really kind of beside the point. We don't have different laws for discrimination in employment based on whether you used filing cards or gut instinct or a rule of thumb to reach a biased conclusion.
I'm Sure Florida Man Will Host Your Training (Score:3, Insightful)
All is well EU, all is well. Besides the EU governments will train however they want, yet the citizens can't. Heil!
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Wisdom.
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It's not something that goes unopposed and it will be corrected.
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Lots of US government uses of copyrighted material has been without approval and gone completely unchanged and wasn't licensed or paid for at all. It's pretty likely that the next time they audit themselves in the EU they'll have some of the same and some new elements they violate. They're too big and disorganized to comply with extensive and complicated laws like GDPR and DMA.
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That's the way to implement compliance: launch internal audit, find out what needs to be changed, follow up on recommendations. Even GDPR, which was approved for some time already, is still work in progress in large structures. You might find out that you forgot to implement a way to track corporate pictures for employees such that employees can oppose the publication of their images, or initially agree then change their minds anytime. You might find you forgot that the contractor for the employees kids day
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Because deciding for yourself (Score:3)
Cool (Score:2)
What stops AI researchers and startups from moving to the US or China to work on this stuff instead?
Can a EU business pay for services of a foreign company that uses illegal AI that it does not disclose?
I think laws and regulations are exactly what government is for. But it's complicated in a global economy. And really there has to be treaties, especially between Western nations, to establish some minimum standards for ethical operation of industry.
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Let's see, the EU is a market 1.5 times the size of the US. Yep, just move, and ignore it.
Sure.
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They're also speed running pissing off their citizenship to the point they all get the French Revolution treatment. It used to be a meme that the EU was an unaccountable nanny state, but it's becoming more true with every law and act they pass.
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The compute and data center market or are we just comparing GDPs?
Not that it matters. Because why would the size of the EU's market matter if my intention is to move my operation elsewhere but still collect revenue from EU companies (or all companies, since this is a global economy) through some rather easy contractor loopholes?
High risk: social scoring/subliminal manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not how that works (Score:4, Insightful)
The new legislation applies to AI products in the EU market, regardless of where they were developed.
If I make an AI in America, host it in America, and my business remains in America, you get no say over how I develop or what I do with it.
If your citizens go to my American site to view, use, or download something I made, that's 100% on them. I am in no way responsible for the actions of someone in your continent/country.
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More or less, yes.
However, if you try to accept payments from Europeans, who are using European payment networks to pay your American account, you’re going to start to run into problems eventually if the EU pushes hard enough (as in, they’ll eventually require payments processors to not allow transactions to you, etc.).
More relevantly though is that this targets big companies with serious AI products, not individuals with websites. Those big companies want to be able to sell to EU customers. The
You can legislate all you want (Score:2)