[HN Gopher] Europe seeks to limit use of AI in society
___________________________________________________________________
Europe seeks to limit use of AI in society
Author : anticristi
Score : 142 points
Date : 2021-04-14 16:40 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| rndude wrote:
| The title should read "Europe seeks to limit use of AI because
| they can't build any AI system themself"
|
| The state of AI in Europe is a sad joke and we already think
| about regulation.
| capableweb wrote:
| > The state of AI in Europe is a sad joke and we already think
| about regulation.
|
| Yeah, fuck people who want to think about and limit the
| consequences of what they are working on.
|
| Like who would ever want to draft up laws around nuclear
| weapons before researching and developing nuclear weapons, that
| removes all the fun?
| CFA178B wrote:
| Europe can hardly implement a crud application, but they like to
| talk their heads off about the risks of AI - painful.
| nkl58 wrote:
| What a fruitful reply
| keiferski wrote:
| Bonus points if they name the overseeing organization _the Turing
| Police._ _And_ if Switzerland goes its own way and allows
| citizenship for AIs.
|
| In all seriousness, I'm not sure if these legal restrictions will
| actually be effective. They are too broad, vague, and will likely
| just result in technological stagnation.
| daenney wrote:
| Laws aren't immutable and right now this is just a proposal.
| We'll have to see what its final form ends up being.
|
| > will likely just result in technological stagnation.
|
| Nothing in this stops any kind of research nor does it ban its
| use. It just limits how effortlessly you can invade people's
| privacy and discriminate against them. It may very well help
| research in underinvested areas of AI, and it's ethical
| consequences.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Laws aren't immutable_
|
| You could've fooled me. About the only thing that seems to
| change laws in places like the EU is when the courts decide
| to strike something down. Everything else seems to just go
| ahead the way the EU politicians envisioned. Consequences be
| damned.
| jariel wrote:
| " will actually be effective"
|
| Effective in doing what?
|
| Everyone is caught up in ridiculous AI mythology, and
| misunderstanding the nature of the tech.
|
| AI is just one approach to solving a problem, and will
| invariably make up just a small part of more complex systems
| involving mostly classically approaches.
|
| Not only is AI not hugely special, nothing we do or use is
| mostly 'AI' to begin with.
|
| From the article:
|
| "AI systems used for indiscriminate surveillance applied in a
| generalised manner"
|
| So does this mean as long as we're not using Deep Learning, we
| _can_ indiscriminately surveil?
|
| And what if the 'surveillance system' doesn't use AI, but the
| cameras themselves have AI embedded within to adjust focus?
| Does that count?
|
| What if the system doesn't use AI, but the supporting services
| do?
|
| It's basically ridiculous.
|
| If the government wants to regulate 'mass surveillance' - that
| sounds like a good thing so do that.
|
| If they want to ensure privacy in certain domains - great - but
| it has nothing to do with 'AI'.
|
| Edit:
|
| Futhermore:
|
| "Mr Leufer added that the proposals should "be expanded to
| include all public sector AI systems, regardless of their
| assigned risk level".
|
| "This is because people typically do not have a choice about
| whether or not to interact with an AI system in the public
| sector.""
|
| This is laughably bad, because again, there is not such thing
| as an 'AI System'.
|
| A broad ban on on AI in the public sector would almost
| guarantee European stagnation in every sector, for no good
| reason at all.
|
| Will they ban Google Search in public service? Google
| assistant? Google navigation? Those use AI.
|
| Will they ban AI signal processing for anything related to
| government?
|
| They'll have to ban Tesla as well, there's a ton of AI in every
| unit.
|
| Will there be a single automobile in 10 years that won't have
| AI components? The EU is going to ban all of them from use in
| public service?
|
| Even today, AI is almost universal in every day systems, that
| is only going to increase quite a lot.
|
| In 5 years, you literally won't be able to use any tech without
| it touching some form of AI.
|
| Mr. Leufeur has no understanding of what he is talking about.
| thebackup wrote:
| I don't believe in BDUF:ing even regulations too much, better
| to get a toothless first version out in the wild and then tweak
| it when in place.
| mc32 wrote:
| But, what good is technology for the sake of technology if it's
| detrimental to people's well-being? Technology to conquer ills,
| yes. Technology which alienates people, no.
|
| It's kind of like the goths vs the romans or the inuit vs
| europeans. Is the value of progress more than the value of
| self-worth?
| keiferski wrote:
| That's a different question. Even if you think certain
| technologies are overall negative, you may be forced to adopt
| them in order to remain competitive with other nation states.
| Nuclear weapons are probably the classic example here. AI
| seems similar to me.
| [deleted]
| quotemstr wrote:
| Nuclear weapons are a huge net positive for humanity. Have
| we had another big industrial war since WWII? No. Why not?
| Because the combatants understand that nowadays total war
| means total annihilation. Now we resolve our disputes in
| other ways. Nuclear weapons gave us an age of peace.
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| There's a survivorship bias here. If nuclear weapons did
| totally annihilate society we could not have this
| conversation.
| kube-system wrote:
| Their point is that anyone who can develop a nuclear
| weapon also is aware of this. It might be a survivorship
| bias, but it is also self-fulfilling.
|
| The biggest threat, as I can see it, is a truly
| irrational actor. Luckily they're hard enough to build
| that this prerequisite has so far filtered out anyone
| truly irrational.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm more concerned about these two aspects of it from the
| reporting:
|
| > Experts said the rules were vague and contained loopholes.
|
| > The use of AI in the military is exempt, as are systems
| used by authorities in order to safeguard public security.
|
| Sounds like it's keyed to build stagnation in public tools,
| but state-actor tools can go right on ahead becoming more
| sophisticated (and harder to understand or predict).
| overscore wrote:
| There are almost always these exemptions for military/law
| enforcement use cases in EU Directives and Regulations,
| because while the constituent countries in the EU have
| miltary and law enforcement co-operation, they would veto
| new legislation that impacts their independence in those
| areas.
| visarga wrote:
| > Is the value of progress more than the value of self-worth?
|
| Why is self worth put in antithesis with progress? Was past
| progress a cause of loss of self worth?
| mc32 wrote:
| Progress brings good: vaccines, decreased infant mortality,
| etc. But we also get to live in cities, disconnected from
| some realities, like food and self sufficiency. In
| civilization you are counting on other people doing things
| for you. Farming, housing, transportation, care, education,
| etc. Yes it's fancy and advanced and most of us will choose
| modern life, but not everyone has gone that route (goths in
| roman times, inuit in present times). Some people see value
| in being connected to nature, not necessarily in some
| artificial romantic way, but more visceral ways and
| forgoing modern progressive life.
| quotemstr wrote:
| How do you _know_ that these technologies are detrimental to
| people 's well-being?
|
| Some activists _claim_ that things like facial recognition,
| ad targeting, and personalized risk scoring are detrimental,
| but are these activists correct? I don 't think so! All these
| technologies give us new capabilities and allow us to more
| precisely understand and shape the world.
|
| Every single time humanity has gained new abilities --- from
| the Acheulean stone ax to the modern deep neural network ---
| humans in general have benefited and prospered, because any
| increase in our ability to understand and manipulate the
| world is a boon.
|
| There is no such thing as a net-negative technology.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > There is no such thing as a net-negative technology
|
| Explain to me the benefits of a gatling gun, other than
| being a more effective tool for killing humans. Is all of
| humanity really better off for all those that have been
| killed by this invention?
|
| That's a _lot_ of deaths that start out as a massive
| negative balance against. Tell me the overall improvement
| to society that the gatling gun brought us that was
| "worth" those deaths.
| livueta wrote:
| Lethality of weaponry has a significant impact on how
| battles are fought, where increasing lethality generally
| means fewer participants and, counterintuitively, fewer
| deaths: https://acoup.blog/2021/02/26/fireside-friday-
| february-26-20... is a decent discussion.
|
| There's obviously some lag (the bloodiness of WWI) but
| overall yes, in a weird way, the Gatling gun and other
| weapons like it are part of why you're a lot less likely
| to die as a draftee today than in the Napoleonic era.
| watwut wrote:
| WWII was even bloodier then WWI.
|
| The obvious difference between current draftee and
| Napoleon one is that Napoleon set up to conquer other
| coutries. The peace time draftee is going to have lower
| mortality.
|
| Napoleon was literally the aggressor.
| livueta wrote:
| WWII's civilian/military casualty ratio was way higher
| than WWI's (~2:1 vs. very very roughly 1:1 or lower),
| which would affect how the lethality hypothesis affects
| casualties. When more of the dead are civilians and
| civilians predominantly die from famine and disease,
| higher overall death counts in a more-global conflict
| don't necessarily mean that conflict killed more soldiers
| per-capita, though some nations definitely suffered
| higher per-capita military losses due to factors beyond
| increasing weapon lethality - mostly thinking of Russia
| there. For instance, _furiously crunches Wikipedia
| numbers_ in the UK it looks like WWI had a higher
| proportion of military deaths to population (~2% vs.
| ~.8%) even though it also suffered significantly more
| civilian deaths in II, though not enough to outweigh the
| decrease in military losses as a function of total
| population.
|
| There might be an argument that increasing weapon
| lethality can decrease the number of battlefield
| combatant deaths but also could increase the likelihood
| of mass civilian atrocity. That said, high-lethality
| weapons definitely aren't necessary for mass civilian
| atrocities either.
|
| And sure, I intended a wartime/wartime comparison
| regarding draftees: even if we go back to WWII as the
| last real great-power hot war, a French Napoleonic
| draftee (looking at France as Britain apparently didn't
| actually conscript in the Napoleonic wars) is
| significantly more likely to die in battle than a French
| WWII (or even WWI!) draftee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Napoleonic_Wars_casualties#cit...
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| The mere threat of its awesome killing power made an
| adversary think twice. In one of the most bizarre
| episodes Ms. Keller recounts, on July 17, 1863, during
| the draft riots, the New York Times (which supported
| conscription) mounted three Gatling guns on the roof of
| its headquarters, with the editor in chief at the
| trigger, and successfully cowed an angry mob without
| firing a single shot.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Armies are smaller because drafting ten million half-
| trained teenagers to carry rifles is no longer the best
| way to win a war.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| > All these technologies give us new capabilities and allow
| us to more precisely understand and shape the world.
|
| Allow who to shape the world, exactly? Because it's not me,
| and it's probably not you. Technology gives power to those
| who control it, and control over face-recognition tech,
| personalized risk-scoring and ad tech is in the best cases
| behind several layers of bureaucratic abstraction. Our
| world is being shaped by megacorporations and governments,
| not those whose lives these technologies have the potential
| of having the most negative impact on.
| visarga wrote:
| Our lives are being shaped by powerful organizations so
| we should shun progress because it helps them too! Let's
| all burn our phones and dismantle the internet, it's the
| root of all evil, I tell you.
|
| After we destroy AI we should make sure nobody does any
| data analysis by hand or other means. Just to be sure.
| Because there are people who would justify the exact same
| decisions even without AI. They just use data to do what
| they want. So let's destroy data too, and math so nobody
| can do anything biased or wrong.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > There is no such thing as a net-negative technology.
|
| OK, but no one is actually arguing that. The problem starts
| when the technology gets abused. We need safeguards against
| abuse of AI in much the same way as we need it for nuclear
| weapons and energy and, more recently, social media (eg
| GDPR protections).
| londons_explore wrote:
| > will likely just result in technological stagnation.
|
| I believe that is the goal of the legislation. By stagnating
| the field of AI within the EU one can encourage any negative
| effects to happen in other countries, so they can suffer and
| discover the potential downsides.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| My perspective is that our technological advancement has well
| outpaced our ability to adapt to the changes or bring our legal
| and social tools effectively to bear on them.
|
| A decade or two of stagnation would be frustrating for those in
| the field but probably overall a good thing. Plus I don't think
| this would affect research at all so not even.
| avz wrote:
| > A decade or two of stagnation would be frustrating for
| those in the field but probably overall a good thing.
|
| Is a decade or two of a head start given to high-tech
| totalitarian regimes like China overall a good thing?
|
| > Plus I don't think this would affect research at all so not
| even.
|
| Limiting use of AI reduces interest of the public and young
| researchers and engineers, contributes to brain drain and
| limits availability of large datasets that are an important
| asset for AI development.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Limiting use of AI reduces interest of the public and
| young researchers and engineers, contributes to brain drain
| and limits availability of large datasets that are an
| important asset for AI development.
|
| I disagree. As a senior-year PhD student, I am relieved
| that the EU is taking a stance on this matter and hope that
| others in the West will follow suit (it's probably too late
| for China). I am relieved because I personally have grave
| concerns about the uses of AI in society and have thought
| for some time that some kind of formal and official
| framework is needed. AI researchers haven't yet managed to
| establish such a framework, so legislators have stepped in.
| The framework still seems pretty "green" and like it will
| take a lot of development and improvement, but that a first
| step was made is important.
|
| So in fact you might say that having a legal framework in
| place makes AI research _more_ attractive, because the
| student is not left to wonder about the ethics of her
| research on her own.
|
| As to the availability of large datasets- how do you see
| that this would be affected by the legislation being
| considered?
|
| I should also point out that the reliance on large datasets
| is a bug, not a feature, of the currently dominant AI
| techniques and that an alternative is sorely needed. If
| large datasets became less easily available, that would
| give a good incentive to researchers to go do something
| new, rather than throw a ton of data to an old benchmark to
| improve it by 0.2%.
| [deleted]
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _A decade or two of stagnation would be frustrating for
| those in the field but probably overall a good thing._
|
| Won't they just leave? They could just go somewhere where
| this isn't banned.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Agreed 100%. I appreciate the hacker mindset, but when things
| approach society-altering scale, "just because you can
| doesn't mean you should" should be the mantra, not "move fast
| and break things".
| quotemstr wrote:
| And who decides when that "should" condition is met? Over
| the past few years, I've seen far too many activists react
| to algorithms that notice _true_ but _politically
| inconvenient_ things by trying to shut down the algorithms,
| to pull wool over our eyes, to continue the illusion that
| things are other than what they are. Why should we keep
| doing that?
|
| I have zero faith in the ability of activists or states to
| decide when it's safe to deploy some new technology. Only
| the people can decide that.
| aftbit wrote:
| Not 100% sure what the parent is talking about, but my
| first thought is the predictive policing algorithms used
| in some jurisdictions to set bail and make parole
| decisions. My hazy understanding of the controversy is
| that these algorithms have "correctly" deduced that
| people of color are more likely to reoffend, thus they
| set bail higher or refuse release on parole
| disproportionately. At one fairly low level this
| algorithm has noticed something "true but politically
| inconvenient", but at a higher level, it is completely
| blind to the larger societal context and the structural
| racism that contributes to the racial makeup of convicted
| criminals. I'd argue that calling this simply "true" is
| neglecting a lot of important discussion.
|
| Of course, perhaps the parent is referring to something
| else. I'd also like to see some examples.
| [deleted]
| visarga wrote:
| > completely blind to the larger societal context and the
| structural racism that contributes to the racial makeup
| of convicted criminals
|
| What happens if you and others have conflicting views on
| the "larger societal context"? Who wins, obviously you
| because you are right?
|
| AI has become political football now and everyone with an
| issue finds an AI angle. In all this game few are
| actually interested in AI itself.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| > true but politically inconvenient
|
| Wanna give some examples or are you just dog-whistling?
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Decisions like these need to made slowly and societally
| and over time.
|
| Tension between small-c conservatism that resists change
| and innovators who push for it before the results can be
| known is very important!
|
| No one person or group needs to or will decide.
| Definitely not states. "Activists" both in favor of and
| opposed to changes will be part of it. The last few
| decades in tech the conservative impulse has been mostly
| missing (at least in terms of the application of
| technology to our society lol) and look where we are. A
| techno-dystopian greed powered corporate surveillance
| state.
|
| We're not going to vote on it. Arguments like the one
| happening in this comments section _is_ the process for
| better or worse.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| We also don't have to make the same decision for all use
| of AI.
|
| For example, we should be much more cautious about using
| AI to decide "who should get pulled over for a traffic
| stop" or "how long a sentence should someone get after a
| conviction". Many government uses of AI are deeply
| concerning and absolutely should move more slowly. And
| government uses of AI should absolutely be a society-
| level decision.
|
| For uses of AI that select between people (e.g. hiring
| mechanisms), even outside of government applications, we
| already have regulations in that area, regarding
| discrimination. We don't need anything new there, we just
| need to make it explicitly clear that using an opaque AI
| does not absolve you from non-discrimination regulations.
|
| To pick a random example, if you used AI to determine
| "which service phonecalls should we answer quicker", and
| the _net effect_ of that AI results in systematically
| longer /shorter hold times that correlate with a
| protected class, that's absolutely a problem that should
| be handled by existing non-discrimination regulations,
| just as if you had an in-person queue and systematically
| waved members of one group to the front.
|
| We don't need to be nearly as cautious about AIs doing
| more innocuous things, where consequences and stakes are
| much lower, and where a protected class isn't involved.
| And in particular, non-government uses of AI shouldn't
| necessarily be society-level decisions. If you don't like
| how one product or service uses AI, you can use a
| different one. You don't have that choice when it comes
| to hiring mechanisms, or interactions with government
| services or officials.
|
| Reading the article, it _sounds_ like many of the
| proposals under consideration are consistent with that:
| they 're looking closely at potentially problematic uses
| of AI, not restricting usage of AI in general.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > to algorithms that notice true but politically
| inconvenient
|
| I don't know that I agree that there exists an algorithm
| that can determine what is factually true, so I'm not
| sure I agree that an algorithm can "notice a true thing".
|
| Do you have an example of when an algorithm noticed
| something that was objectively true but was shut down?
| Can you explain how the algorithm took notice of the fact
| that was objectively true (in such a way that all parties
| agree with the truth of the fact)?
|
| I can't think of a single example of an algorithm
| determining or taking notice of an objective fact that
| was rejected in this way. But there are lots of
| controversies I'm not aware of, so it could have slipped
| by me.
| visarga wrote:
| For example gender stereotyping for jobs or personal
| traits, that is politically incorrect but nevertheless
| reflects the corpus of training data. (He is smart. She
| is beautiful. He is a doctor. She is a homemaker.)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I think you're assuming that if it's in the data, it's
| "factually true" as the OP puts it. It doesn't work that
| way. There is such a thing as sampling error, for
| example.
| darepublic wrote:
| Reminds me of this clip:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oNgyUAEv0Q&t=52s
|
| That being said.. I don't trust the gov to decide what
| should be on the internet. I have to resist all attempts to
| do so, while acknowledging some gov suppression is probably
| beneficial. It's a duality and despite being no one side of
| it you can acknowledge the importance of the other side.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > My perspective is that our technological advancement has
| well outpaced our ability to adapt to the changes or bring
| our legal and social tools effectively to bear on them.
|
| > A decade or two of stagnation would be frustrating for
| those in the field but probably overall a good thing. Plus I
| don't think this would affect research at all so not even.
|
| I agree. And frankly, technological "progress" _for its own
| sake_ reeks of technopoly [1]. Technology should serve
| society, not the other way around.
|
| [1] A term coined in a very good book by Neil Postman:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly:
|
| > Postman defines technopoly as a "totalitarian technocracy",
| which demands the "submission of all forms of cultural life
| to the sovereignty of technique and technology".
| dbtc wrote:
| I agree but I'm not so sure society has that much control.
| Maybe technology itself (or/and the economy) is in the
| driver's seat now. Pun intended!
| tiborsaas wrote:
| In an arms race it's not the best strategy to take a step
| back and look at angles. In AI there's an arms race going on
| and one likely outcome of this might be increased brain drain
| and even less likelihood of great companies rising in the EU.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I mean I don't think the damn NSA or whatever the EU has
| for that is going to stop doing whatever they're already
| planning to do with AI.
|
| And I absolutely could not care less about "great companies
| rising" either now or hypothetically in the future.
|
| Some applications of AI tech are very clearly MORALLY WRONG
| and cause harm. Currently that harm is limited because the
| reach of these tools is limited and that is the only thing
| holding them back from doing worse.
|
| If companies need that dynamic to rise and be great then
| they can just not as far as I'm concerned.
| birdsbirdsbirds wrote:
| The limits are a convenient way to escape the challenge. By
| opting out, nobody can ask why European companies don't have
| state of the art AI technology.
|
| If Europe cannot offer more than EUR6.7 billion to create an
| alternative infrastructure to AWS, GCP and Azure then they
| better prepare an excuse for why they haven't managed to create
| AI.
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/european-
| cloud...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| It's a good thing that it is brought into the light and
| discussed though, because most people probably don't realize
| how much power "automated decision making" already has over
| their lives, and it will only get worse if tech giants and
| oppressive governments have their way.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > And if Switzerland goes its own way and allows citizenship
| for AIs.
|
| I'm pretty sure not being a member of the EU, Switzerland will
| go its own way.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Am-I the only one that finds is odd how the British government
| brags about Alan Turing after what they did to him?
|
| The man saved women, men, children, of all races and
| orientations from an horrible end. I wish the British
| government had extended the favor to Turing himself.
| mbroncano wrote:
| Or to that extent Oscar Wilde and many, many others.
| visarga wrote:
| Nobody's above being cancelled, that's what happens when
| righteous people set to work. They know best and are willing
| to educate society by example.
| watwut wrote:
| That is literally what happens with historical figures
| everywhere. Americans now celebrate Martin Luther King for
| example.
| eivarv wrote:
| These issues should solved by making problematic AI-use in breach
| of individual rights (e.g. privacy), rather than regulating the
| technology itself (with govt. exceptions) - which increases the
| power-imbalance between the state and the citizen.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| Does anybody have a link to the actual draft this article is
| based on?
|
| In my limited experience the proposals by the EU commission are
| often readable and interesting. I might not agree with them, but
| I do appreciate that the thought process is made public years
| before ideas become laws. (As the article states, that is also
| very much the expectation here.)
| noshaker wrote:
| Here is the draft
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZaBPsfor_aHKNeeyXxk9uJfTru7...
| anticristi wrote:
| Thanks! 81 pages and no executive summary?!?! I'm interested
| to read it, but this is likely to have the same effect as
| sleeping pills.
| f137 wrote:
| Well, just run it thru an AI summarizer )
| noshaker wrote:
| You can check out this tech crunch article where I got the
| draft from. It is a bit more detailed than the bbc article.
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/14/eu-plan-for-risk-based-
| ai-...
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| No one actually wants a society being ruled by computers, except
| maybe the people running those computers.
|
| This is at least a step in the right direction.
| pelorat wrote:
| Speak for yourself. I take AI over EU politicians any day of
| the week.
| tgv wrote:
| You can't be serious. EU leadership has always been a bit
| weak, with a lot of compromises, and not a hard stance on
| foreign policy, but to prefer an unknown oracle? The current
| state of AI would even have it overfitted on a small relevant
| corpus padded with arbitrary other material. How can you
| expect that to produce better government?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Perhaps OP meant "I take AI computer scientists over EU
| politicians"?
| avz wrote:
| > No one actually wants a society being ruled by computers,
| except maybe the people running those computers.
|
| Humans in charge are known for injustice, kickbacks, favor
| trading, selective enforcement and other forms of corruption
| and abuse. Properly engineered and regularly reviewed open
| source systems with balance checks might just get us closer to
| a rules-based system that provides a level playing field for
| everyone. Given all the known biases of current AI systems, we
| are certainly far from ready for it, but the prospect of
| transforming large parts of government into an open source
| "social operating system" that automatically and fairly offers
| basic services according to clearly coded and broadly enforced
| rules looks like a desirable goal in the (very) long term.
|
| Many laws can be expressed as computer code. Where they cannot
| is often due to deliberate vagueness built in to leave scope
| for future interpretation as new cases arise. This suggests
| that we could express laws in computer code that raises a
| HumanInputRequiredException in the cases currently handled with
| deliberate vagueness. The resulting reduction in vagueness
| would remove a huge amount of discretion that currently
| facilitates corruption and abuse of power while ensuring
| ultimate human control and human-directed evolution of the law.
| avz wrote:
| I want to add a historical remark. Very early forms of human
| government, such as ancient kingdoms in various parts of the
| world, had one or a few prominent members of society hold
| full discretion and decision-making power. Later, we codified
| rules and decided that even monarchs are not above the law.
| Endowing the written laws with additional power by making
| them executable seems like a natural next step.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Luddites.
|
| If you look at the course of history, every attempt to slow the
| adoption of new technology has been a disaster for human welfare.
| This policy move is just like trying to ban the telephone or the
| printing press.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I see this more along the lines of preventing nuclear
| proliferation, chemical and biological warfare.
| quotemstr wrote:
| This is more like banning the production of chlorine gas
| because someone might put it in an artillery shell --- never
| mind all the other useful things you can do with chlorine
| gas. If you want to regulate externalities, regulate
| externalities: don't ban technology itself.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > don't ban technology itself
|
| The EU isn't planning to ban underlying AI technologies,
| but instead to control its use in applications such as
| credit worthiness assessment
| throwawaysea wrote:
| ...which is basically banning people from measuring risk
| for themselves and deciding how to react to that risk
| themselves. How is this not authoritarian?
| La1n wrote:
| >How is this not authoritarian
|
| Authoritatian can mean so many things, could you define
| it further. Cause how I read your comment I could call
| seatbelt laws authoritatian, and I guess you didn't mean
| that.
| ThomPete wrote:
| ai need training data. Its not just a technology play.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| It is humorous that you bring up Luddites, as they were one of
| the first 19th century movements (among many) that sought to
| fight the mechanization and industrialization of their labor,
| and were repressed by military might because god forbid someone
| sabotage a machine.
|
| Many "innovations" were bought at the beginning not for real
| use, but in order to threaten the working class with this new
| tool, so that they do not ask for more job stability, higher
| wages, or reduced working hours (e.g. grain harvesters,
| industrial looms, etc).
|
| And the new technology when used often resulted in a net
| negative in terms of life expectancy, environmental pollution,
| danger or physical load, which was then disregarded as a
| necessary sacrifice that the poor need to make in the
| inexorable march of progress.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > every attempt to slow the adoption of new technology has been
| a disaster for human welfare
|
| Counter-example: nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Maybe if we gave every country nuclear weapons we could stop
| having proxy wars through poorer/developing countries.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >those designed or used in a manner that manipulates human
| behaviour, opinions or decisions ...causing a person to behave,
| form an opinion or take a decision to their detriment
|
| Would this mean that A/B testing of news article headlines would
| be banned if it was powered by software?
| thepangolino wrote:
| Is this a remake of the PGP debacle? If the GDPR and the so
| called EU cookie law are to be taken seriously then yes, it is.
| sneak wrote:
| > _The use of AI in the military is exempt, as are systems used
| by authorities in order to safeguard public security._
|
| I'm fairly sure this excludes nearly 100% of the most risky uses
| of AI that exist today.
| timme wrote:
| By the geniuses that brought us ePrivacy Directive and GDPR.
| Might be cheaper to just tell tech companies they're not welcome
| in the EU.
| vngzs wrote:
| > those designed or used in a manner that manipulates human
| behaviour, opinions or decisions ...causing a person to behave,
| form an opinion or take a decision to their detriment
|
| This appears to obviously apply to the Facebook wall. You can
| find a high-profile example of this in [0], but [1] explains how
| this manipulation, which optimizes "engagement", is built deep
| into Facebook's design. I think the case that it causes users to
| form opinions and take decisions to their detriment is obvious,
| so these new laws should apply. Am I wrong?
|
| [0]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...
|
| [1]: https://qz.com/1039910/how-facebooks-news-feed-algorithm-
| sel...
| enchiridion wrote:
| Seems like books fit that description.
| sturza wrote:
| China brings hardware. US brings software. EU brings the
| regulation.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Or, China brings the matches, US brings the gasoline, EU brings
| the good sense to keep them apart.
| refraincomment wrote:
| Europe != Obscure department of the European Commission issuing
| unsolicited opinions
| anticristi wrote:
| I beg to differ. "AI" is already rejecting CVs and
| untransparently keeping people unemployed. People do care about
| how to use this tool responsibility.
| La1n wrote:
| I think OP was referring specifically to the HN title.
| bitL wrote:
| Here we go, it didn't take long... Anyone still thinking ML won't
| be regulated? ML licenses to purchase GPUs next?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The listed examples seem reasonably good. *
| systems which establish priority in the dispatching of
| emergency services * systems determining access to or
| assigning people to educational institutes * recruitment
| algorithms * those that evaluate credit worthiness
| * those for making individual risk assessments * crime-
| predicting algorithms
|
| While I'd also like to see autonomous military devices banned,
| banned AI that makes opaque life-changing decisions about
| individuals seems reasonable. We already say that these shouldn't
| discriminate and we've seen ways AI can allow discrimination
| through the back door.
| tomp wrote:
| > we've seen ways AI can allow discrimination through the back
| door.
|
| Do you have any concrete examples of these, in particular where
| the use of statistics or AI enables _more_ discrimination than
| using human decisions?
| _1 wrote:
| https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Why does it have to be "more"?
| tomp wrote:
| Parent mentioned that AI is used to sneak in discrimination
| _through the back door_ , implying that discrimination
| wouldn't be there (or there would be less) without AI.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| The OP mentioned "AI that makes opaque life-changing
| decisions". In that context, "through the back door" was
| more likely meant in the sense of "without anyone
| noticing".
|
| It doesn't really matter if there is "less"
| discrimination without AI. While AI is not there, there
| is no discrimination from AI. If there is some after
| introducing AI, then it's a problem with AI.
| nix0n wrote:
| Here's an example: mortgages (in the USA) used to be
| approved or denied by humans, but there were certain
| neighborhoods where only white people were allowed.
|
| Now, there's a law against that.
|
| In the future, there will be an AI system to approve or
| deny mortgages, based off of historical training data.
| Since that data includes the redlining era, the AI will
| learn to make racist decisions.
|
| Most people do not understand how it is possible for a
| computer to be racist. (Other than against all humans
| like in Terminator 2.) This is why it's "through the back
| door", because it's not obvious how it's possible or
| where it's coming from.
| someguy321 wrote:
| One I can think of off the top of my head (statistics, not
| AI, although AI would also allow it) is that the actuarial
| calculations for home/car insurance quotes rely on risk data
| by zip code, education level, income, and any and all other
| socioeconomic variables not including protected class, but
| which often correlate/group by protected class, and which are
| also reliable indicators of risk.
|
| Depending on who you talk to these algorithms either are or
| are not discriminating against protected classes "through the
| back door".
| tomp wrote:
| Sure but my point is that, while you could argue that
| decisions about some topics could be discriminatory _by
| definition_ , that has nothing to do with AI (and saying
| that AI is at fault is pure anti-AI FUD).
| jariel wrote:
| Yes - and you've just proven the folly of this entire
| exercise -> those algorithms have nothing to do with AI!
|
| If the government believes that credit risk systems cannot
| use 'race' as a factor, then they ought to reaffirm that.
|
| They shouldn't be restricting broad use of a technology.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> we've seen ways AI can allow discrimination through the
| back door.
|
| >> we've seen ways AI can allow discrimination through the
| back door.
|
| > Do you have any concrete examples of these, in particular
| where the use of statistics or AI enables more discrimination
| than using human decisions?
|
| Here's a concrete example:
|
| https://towardsdatascience.com/racist-data-human-bias-is-
| inf...
|
| > An AI program called COMPAS has been used by a Wisconsin
| court to predict the likelihood that convicts will reoffend.
| An investigative piece by ProPublica last year found that
| this risk assessment system was biased against black
| prisoners, incorrectly flagging them as being more likely to
| reoffend than white prisoners (45% to 24% respectively).
| These predictions have led to defendants being handed longer
| sentences, as in the case of Wisconsin v. Loomis.
|
| Also, I'd dispute your injection of the "more racist than
| humans" framing (which is also moving the goalposts a bit).
| The problem with racist algorithms isn't necessarily their
| "degree of racism" but the fact that they mask very real
| racism behind a veneer of false computerized "objectivity."
| alexvoda wrote:
| It's not that it enables more, it's that the AI is harder to
| fight and easier to excuse.
|
| Just like when a clerk tells you "The computer won't let me."
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Presumably politicians fear an independent AI that would make
| technically correct but politically incorrect decisions in all
| of those categories.
| neilparikh wrote:
| I think the tradeoff is that at least the AI discrimination is
| systemized, and there's one place you can manipulate to reduce
| that discrimination, while with pre-AI human discrimination,
| it's not at one place, so it's harder to eliminate.
|
| As an example, it's the difference between being rejected by a
| central agent for a loan, versus going to your local branch,
| and being rejected by a random employee at the local branch.
| It's obviously much easier to change the central agent than it
| is to change every distributed employee.
|
| Now, whether this is actually the case in practice, and whether
| this is a good or bad thing is open to interpretation.
| iR5ugfXGAE wrote:
| *It's obviously much easier to change the random employee
| than it is to change the central agent.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| " _I think the tradeoff is that at least the AI
| discrimination is systemized_ "
|
| What does systematized mean in this context? The specific
| problem is that modern deep learning systems are
| _unsystematic_ - they heuristically determine a result-
| procedure based on some goodness measure and this result-
| procedure is a black box.
|
| You already have criteria-based algorithms for things like
| loans - the individual employees aren't making arbitrary
| decisions or just pen-and-paper calculations. You have a
| central algorithm now in a given bank, one that can be looked
| and understood. The question is whether to go _from that_ to
| an opaque, "trained" algorithm whose criteria can't analyzed
| directly.
| extropy wrote:
| As far as I can tell the law does not prohibit algorithm
| assisted decision making. So as long there is a human
| rendering the final decision we are good. Which seems to be a
| reasonable balance IMO.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I thought this article would be about software in heavy machinery
| like self driving cars but it's more aimed at applications of AI
| that are incompatible with human rights: social scores,
| surveillance, crime-prediction, etc.
| dalbasal wrote:
| This is the problem: _they_ don 't really understand what
| they're trying to regulate. A lot of it is (a) data-privacy
| issues or (b) using data to make automated decisions. The "AI"
| part is superfluous, as far as I can see.
|
| Lawmakers appear as caught up in labeling stuff "AI" as
| investors. It's going to make them less effective by letting
| them avoid actually defining what they're trying to prevent.
|
| Consider:
|
| " _those (AIs) designed or used in a manner that manipulates
| human behaviour, opinions or decisions ...causing a person to
| behave, form an opinion or take a decision to their detriment_
| "
|
| It's clearly about advertising and social media. If you want
| regulation to be effective, specifics are good. Platitudes
| don't make good regulations.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| This just feels like a play for large tech companies to be out
| regulated from the European market.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| A restriction on computation and processing of information seems
| like a restriction on speech, expression, and thought. The list
| named in this article is just bizarre. For example it mentions
| that the following would be covered by the proposed policy:
|
| > those designed or used in a manner that manipulates human
| behaviour, opinions or decisions ...causing a person to behave,
| form an opinion or take a decision to their detriment
|
| Can't all of marketing, politics, and activism be constructed to
| fall under this broad statement? It feels to me like this
| unfairly allows only certain means to achieving the same ends,
| which ends up favoring certain segments of society at the expense
| of others. As an example, what makes shaping political opinions
| using AI inappropriate but shaping it via disruptive protesting
| appropriate? A person who few responsibilities and enough time to
| spend protesting is allowed to influence society, and someone who
| wants to do the same through a different means that makes more
| sense for them isn't permitted to do so? Similarly, credit
| worthiness and crime risk assessment are plainly _logical_ ways
| for individuals, corporations, and governments to contain risks,
| incentivize the correct behavior, and make smart decisions for
| themselves. Getting rid of credit scoring is equivalent to income
| redistribution, since less risky individuals will be forced to
| subsidize others.
|
| I don't think blanket regulation like this is the answer. The
| answer lies in ensuring healthy markets with sufficient
| competition (enforcing anti-trust law), in relying on federalism
| so that local governments can decide which technologies they want
| to use or not use, and in privacy controls for users to retain
| control of their data. Not in restricting math.
| goatcode wrote:
| >The use of AI in the military is exempt, as are systems used by
| authorities in order to safeguard public security.
|
| Of course.
| modeless wrote:
| The problem with government regulation of AI is that the
| biggest threat is government use of AI. Rules for thee but not
| for me!
| goatcode wrote:
| Any governing body seems to leave a lot of room for "except
| for pigs" when they write down their rules. The bigger the
| body, the more potential pigs there are.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Your use of "pigs" reminds me of: "All animals are equal,
| but some animals are more equal than others"
| gramakri wrote:
| It's meant to remind you of that quote :) because the
| rules are made by pigs in the book Animal farm. Your
| quote comes from the same book
| geraneum wrote:
| Government (ab)use of AI is is of course a serious threat.
| But I'd say big corporations abuse of AI is even worse.
|
| Assuming we are talking about a democratic state, at least
| there are some checks and balances on governments whereas
| people cannot elect a FAANG CEO or go to a '.gov' website to
| read a transcript of board meetings.
|
| Edit: I am by no means advocating for government's use of AI
| in any form.
| trutannus wrote:
| A business can't lock you in a prison cell. I'd argue that
| the checks and balances at this point are little more than
| a mirage. Ruling by fiat is becoming more common,
| accountability less so. Government use of AI is far more
| menacing to me than a business using it.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > A business can't lock you in a prison cell
|
| Perhaps not, but companies can deny you access to
| fundamental electronic infrastructure, use of which is
| increasingly essential in a cashless society where
| services are online or non-existent. With no right of
| appeal.
| cheschire wrote:
| This is needlessly pedantic, but private prisons are
| absolutely a thing in America.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| The part that matters is what makes a person required to
| be in prison (i.e. government law / judicial system) and
| not who runs the prison.
| trutannus wrote:
| Of course, but the person who assigns you to that prison
| is still acting on behalf of the state. It would be
| correct to say that a business can keep you in a prison
| though!
| bhupy wrote:
| Although private prisons exist (in strikingly small
| numbers[1]), private corporations can't just decide to
| throw you into a private prison on a whim; the government
| decides that.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-
| priso...
| La1n wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
|
| Private prison kickbacks for conviction are a thing.
| bhupy wrote:
| They're not _presently_ a thing; it 's just a scandal
| that happened at one time in history. It's also
| corruption, and corruption exists in both the private as
| well as public sectors. In the case of the Kids for Cash
| scandal, there have since been lawsuits, overturned
| adjudications, and commissions to ensure that it doesn't
| happen again.
|
| Solving corruption is orthogonal to the question of
| whether private corporations can perform extra-judicial
| imprisonment with impunity. That really just doesn't
| happen at scale, because it can't.
| La1n wrote:
| >just a scandal that happened at one time in history.
|
| I really hope that's true, but it might also be that it
| was only convicted for once in history while it happens
| more often.
| bhupy wrote:
| Oh, I absolutely do not doubt that it could happen again
| more often, but at least we have Racketeering laws and a
| system to essentially minimize the degree to which it
| happens _with impunity_.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Ruling by fiat is becoming more common, accountability
| less so._
|
| Well, PG&E cut down a whole bunch of trees in my town
| just recently, against the objections of the locals and
| the city council. And Judge Alsop, who supervises their
| bankruptcy chided them for this slap-dash, crude effort
| to show they were doing thing (didn't stop them, darn
| it).
|
| So you see a bunch of actions that _look_ like the state
| or industry acting by fiat. But it only looks that way.
| The many institutions of this society are at loggerheads
| with each other, the parties are in gridlock, etc. The
| main thing is they 've shut out the average person from
| their debates - which is a bit different.
| trutannus wrote:
| > look like the state or industry acting by fiat
|
| The propensity of leaders to rule by executive order, or
| cabinet bill is what I'm getting at. Those sorts of
| actions are most certainly ruling by fiat.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > Government use of AI is far more menacing to me than a
| business using it.
|
| I think both are equally menacing. The problem with
| business usage is that we're "trusting" them to be good
| stewards of that capability.
|
| There's not much preventing a business from abusing such
| power in a covert anti-competitive anti-consumer fashion,
| or worse, selling access to that power to the highest
| bidder (as a service!).
| neilparikh wrote:
| Note that these checks and balances don't apply to non-
| citizens of the country, who are the people affected the
| use of AI in military (one of the exemptions listed above).
| If a EU member state abuses AI in the military against a
| non-European, what direct recourse do they have?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Government does regulate itself, sometimes. The proposal
| seems to be concerned with regulating the government, for
| example limiting "crime prediction". Also, the private
| institutions it's talking about are things like credit
| bureaus and employers large enough to use AI for screening
| employees.
| goatcode wrote:
| >for example limiting "crime prediction"
|
| I saw that too, and ended up wondering if it'll be ignored
| if it's seen that crime prediction falls under the "public
| safety" exception, from time to time (or eventually,
| altogether). That's the problem with vague things like
| "public safety" being tied to regulation, imo.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The AI race is in an unstable equilibrium. Slight perturbations
| of the initial conditions (slight advantage) will have
| consequential, exponential and final implications years later.
| ThomPete wrote:
| the only outcome of this is that Europe will fall even further
| behind the US and China. How sad.
| clownpenis_fart wrote:
| Since there have been and will be exactly zero useful ai
| application anytime soon other than bias laundering (aka
| "systematic discrimination is ok when a computer does it"), I
| think it's ok.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| While I don't necessarily disagree, can you elaborate a bit
| more? AI is likely to make some significant impacts
| especially in computer vision applications among others.
| ThomPete wrote:
| And with that approach there wont be in europe anytime soon
| :)
| anticristi wrote:
| I share your concern: Train AI to reject CVs with "Ahmed" and
| accept CVs with "Smith". Then blame racial bias on the
| difficulty to explain DNN.
| FredPret wrote:
| Big organization seeks to dam water with sieve, says "this time
| will be different"
| roomey wrote:
| It's been in Irish law for some time (which makes it applicable
| to the majority of US tech giants). Unfortunately Ireland isn't
| hq for a lot of the big finance and insurance firms which would
| probably be more useful in this situation. Anyway, here is the
| latest version of the law: TLDR; if it impacts you it should
| require a human decision and be appeal-able. Also there is a
| right to review code but I'm not sure how that works:
|
| the right of a data subject not to be subject to a decision based
| solely on automated processing, including profiling, which
| produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly
| significantly affects him or her shall, in addition to the
| grounds identified in Article 22(2)(a) and (c), not apply where--
|
| (a) the decision is authorised or required by or under an
| enactment, and
|
| (b) either--
|
| (i) the effect of that decision is to grant a request of the data
| subject, or
|
| (ii) in all other cases (where subparagraph (i) is not
| applicable), adequate steps have been taken by the controller to
| safeguard the legitimate interests of the data subject which
| steps shall include the making of arrangements to enable him or
| her to--
|
| (I) make representations to the controller in relation to the
| decision,
|
| (II) request human intervention in the decision-making process,
|
| (III) request to appeal the decision.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I'll vote for any party that will make tracking illegal. I am
| sick and tired of being stalked by all those multibillion
| corporations who don't even give anything back. They are the
| cancer on the society.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| We will have to face everything everybody thinks up. Legislation
| is whistling in the dark (pissing in the wind; closing the barn
| door...). Its too easy to create and deploy these things. Anybody
| who finds a reason to do so, will.
|
| It will take social changes of some kind, to adapt to this new
| reality. Not draconian laws.
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