[HN Gopher] EU strikes deal to regulate ChatGPT, AI tech
___________________________________________________________________
EU strikes deal to regulate ChatGPT, AI tech
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 166 points
Date : 2023-12-09 06:20 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.is/qV4xB
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Anyone have the text that was agreed upon?
|
| Edit: I know the text is not final as it needs more work, but I
| was hoping for a leaked draft text of amendments that clinched
| 'the agreement'.
| arlort wrote:
| I don't think it's ready yet, from what I read in statements
| they found a compromise but it still needs to go through some
| processes to turn the agreed points into legalese (and then the
| translations)
|
| I don't think it'll be voted on this month
| snowpid wrote:
| This month is Christmas. It won't.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah without the actual agreement (which is still subject to
| voting, etc) this is an empty discussion
|
| This is literally based on one short tweet
|
| Edit: this seems to be a (slightly) more substantial press
| release https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-
| room/20231206IP...
| rightbyte wrote:
| "prohibits ... social scoring based on social behaviour or
| personal characteristics;"
|
| Does this outlaw Tinder?
| nunez wrote:
| > AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent
| their free will;
|
| > AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to
| their age, disability, social or economic situation).
|
| So basically all social media in their current forms?
| developer93 wrote:
| All that don't just have time ordered feeds, or feeds which
| are highly configurable by the user anyway. I guess
| mastodon doesn't fall under this category..
| frantzmiccoli wrote:
| I haven't found a final version online.
|
| I wrote an article / review of the drafts that were available a
| few months ago. You have the links to the sources.
|
| https://outofthecomfortzone.frantzmiccoli.com/thoughts/2023/...
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| I've heard the phrase "regulating yourself out of the market."
|
| Do you feel this applies here?
| diet_jerome wrote:
| Of course. I mean this is the eu we're talking about.
| thefz wrote:
| Happy not to conduct business with a party if its practice does
| not reflect my values.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| So the answer is to take that choice away from you?
| thefz wrote:
| The answer is that unbridled capitalism is not what I want.
| logicchains wrote:
| What about the people in Europe who do want to use those
| services? Why does what you want trump what they want,
| especially when them doing what they want has no direct
| impact on you.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| We don't have anything anywhere close to unbridled
| capitalism.
| hartator wrote:
| Are you ready to opt out to cancer treatments found by US
| AIs?
| scrollaway wrote:
| This sort of comment is so useless.
|
| Do you actually believe cancer treatments are what the EU
| is going to lose on with these regulations?
|
| Why?
| csa wrote:
| While I agree that the comment you replied to seems a bit
| over the top, I don't think the answer to your question
| is as obvious as you make it out to be.
|
| 1. If the AI is more effective at finding successful
| cancer treatment for Little Endians versus Big Endians,
| then there is a non-zero chance that the AI will be
| deemed discriminatory. This could play out in a number of
| ways, but restricted access is certainly one of them. I
| live in California, and I also think that there is a non-
| zero chance of this happening here. It all depends on how
| the treatment and data are presented.
|
| 2. If the manufacturer of said treatment is anti-union,
| will the treatment options be distributable in certain
| parts of Europe?
| Trombone12 wrote:
| There were plenty of top tier Covid vaccines created in
| Europe, and a Danish pharmaceutical is currently crushing
| the US weight loss market: your jingoism is deluding you.
| csa wrote:
| > your jingoism is deluding you
|
| As is yours.
|
| Who said anything about where I think this AI would be
| developed?
|
| US is possible. So is China. So is Europe. Not
| necessarily in that order. Japan might have an outside
| chance if certain things line up a certain way.
|
| If Europe and the US make AI research overly cumbersome,
| I'm sure there are plenty of countries that will offer
| sweetheart deals to the best teams looking for a new
| home.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Indeed, I will have to geoblock my products out of the EU, as
| I've heard others have already done.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I'll go further. I fully do not recognize certain internet
| laws enacted recently by various states in the US, such as
| requiring identification to view a website, or banning
| children from using the internet after dark.
|
| Laws like these are unconstitutional and I intend to actively
| disregard them while still serving customers in those states.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| How are they unconstitutional?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| First amendment grounds.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/18/cali
| for...
|
| Know your rights.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| The axiom is that the EU is such an important market that it
| can dictate terms to the world. Such as the landmark success of
| persuading Apple that it may as well use USB on mobile phones.
|
| It's not as clear that it's better to give up on artificial
| intelligence than to give up on Europe. When your axioms are
| unsound, you can derive nonsense from them. So yep, it seems
| Europe isn't going to be the future of machine intelligence, to
| the astonishment of noone.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > The axiom is that the EU is such an important market that
| it can dictate terms to the world.
|
| So the EU exists strictly in an effort to bully the rest of
| the world into their continental ideas? I thought the purpose
| was to provide representation and protection to their own
| citizens.
|
| > So yep, it seems Europe isn't going to be the future of
| machine intelligence, to the astonishment of noone.
|
| They mistook State Authority as an end unto itself.
| Everything else is going to be secondary to that.
| tensor wrote:
| Before I sold my previous company, a medium size ai company,
| it was already often an internal debate whether the EU was
| worth selling to for our size company.
|
| The reality is that the EU is a much much smaller market than
| North America, and expensive to operate in even without
| onerous AI regulation.
|
| It's likely easier to support the EU for larger companies,
| but there is little doubt in my mind that this sort of
| regulation in the near term will ensure that Europe will
| always get services much later than NA, and maybe some
| companies will choose not to bring some products to the EU at
| all.
| snordgren wrote:
| The EU has been declining in its share of the world market
| year on year - it should focus on stopping the decline, not
| adding more regulatory burden.
| marvin wrote:
| What a trade. Sacrificed the next qualitative shift in
| economic growth after the industrial revolution, and in
| return was able to force the switch of the Lightning port in
| one type of phone for USB-C.
| pipes wrote:
| This all seems premature. So far we have something that can
| generate text and pictures based on other text and pictures ?
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > This all seems premature. So far we have something that can
| generate text and pictures based on other text and pictures ?
|
| I think the reasoning is that at one time Social Media was just
| a few sites where people could share photos and fun articles
| they'd read - and it turned into a privacy/hate speech/monopoly
| minefield that no one is sure is completely good for society
| and now is impossible to control.
| ekianjo wrote:
| why do you have to control anything? Again the government
| knowing no bounds, but not surprising coming from non-
| democratic bureaucratic EU
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > why do you have to control anything? Again the government
| knowing no bounds
|
| Because most countries have laws about discrimination,
| promoting hate, inciting hatred, meddling with elections
| etc.
|
| There's nothing here that wasn't included as part of the
| Bletchley declaration about AI safety and signed by just
| about all the well known AI players including
| democratically elected governments last month.
| Levitz wrote:
| Because not controlling anything has a LONG history of
| utter misery and might still lead to borderline human
| extinction as it is now.
| logicchains wrote:
| Elites controlling everything is why the couple thousand
| years prior to the 1900s almost everybody in the world
| lived in conditions that would be considered abject
| poverty today.
| __loam wrote:
| Honey, the elites control most of the infrastructure
| related to this stuff now.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| And you don't think conditions suck for a good number of
| the world?
|
| This sort of rhetoric is empty and meaningless, useful
| only for antagonism.
| developer93 wrote:
| And not having any control is why some "shithole"
| countries have that reputation..
| kasperni wrote:
| Really? I know Snap AI (which is available for kids over 13)
| will happily advise you with how to cut yourself if you ask it.
| rafale wrote:
| So would Google or any obscure forums. Just like fraud, the
| optimal amount of negativity in a technology is never zero.
| Gotta accept some amount of issues to maximize the benefits
| to drawbacks ratio.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| praying that the regulators do not read this: so far it can
| generate code and run code either in the sandbox or if you give
| it access to your system.
| troupo wrote:
| > This all seems premature. So far we have something that can
| generate text and pictures based on other text and pictures ?
|
| People say this with a straight face having China as an
| example, and news like this https://www.404media.co/fusus-ai-
| cameras-took-over-town-amer... and Deloitte alraedy campaigning
| for predictive policing:
| https://www2.deloitte.com/fi/fi/pages/public-sector/articles...
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Can't wait to read the deal.
|
| But this should not be very hard to agree on, which pretty much
| showcases the fuckery going.
|
| A fucking no brainer to turn down. Which it seems they not really
| did but perhaps did a little bit.
|
| "The negotiators agreed to allow some live scanning of faces, but
| with safeguards and exemptions, Breton said. The deal would
| prohibit biometric scanning that categorizes people by sensitive
| characteristics, such as political or religious beliefs, sexual
| orientation or race. Officials said this was one of the most
| difficult and sensitive issues in the talks."
| rightbyte wrote:
| Seems impossible to store photos without recording religious
| affiliation. Some Jews, Sihks, Muslim women etc wear headwear
| that is a give away.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Storing a photo is not the same as "biometric scanning" of
| that photo to categorise it.
| mitjam wrote:
| The EU has provided a high level overview of the regulatory
| framework here: [1]. Quite old (2021) but the general idea is
| probably still valid. I think the idea is sound.
|
| The question is whether foundation models will be regulated
| already as high risk because they could be applied in high risk
| use cases or if only the use case applications themselves will be
| regulated.
|
| It tends to be more in the direction of "let's regulate the
| foundation, as well".
|
| BTW: Something similar is in the works for regulating software,
| including open source software with the new "EU Directive for
| Liability of Defective Products". Here is a discussion: [2].
|
| The rationale behind both seem to be something like: We (software
| vendors in the EU) rely so heavily on open source software and
| put just a little bit on top, that it would be too much work for
| us to ensure compliance of the underlying software for our use
| case. So, please, dear regulators, regulate the underlying
| software, as well, even if it is open source, so that the
| compliance burden is not on us, but on the authors of the
| underlying software.
|
| The compliance industry is happy (new business), the big software
| vendors are happy (reduced competition from smaller vendors in
| high-stakes industries), the regulators are happy (fewer vendors
| to deal with while ensuring the regulation will actually be
| enforced).
|
| /sigh
|
| [1]: https://digital-
| strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory...
|
| [2]: https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2023/open-
| source-...
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/FMB2W
| ur-whale wrote:
| EU, a mostly unelected body, takes one more step to _guarantee_
| innovation will happen elsewhere in the world and that its
| citizen will be legally obliged to use inferior products.
|
| Yay.
| akie wrote:
| Libertarianism and disdain for governing bodies is a trope here
| on Hacker News, _especially_ if it's the EU.
| kitd wrote:
| MEPs are elected, Council consists of member states' elected
| leaders. Only the commissioners aren't elected and they weren't
| drawing up the legislation.
|
| Other than that, good point.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Between this and the "Digital Rights" nonsense it does seem the
| EU has lost its way.
| tfourb wrote:
| Literally every EU institution is legitimized just like
| National governments:
|
| - EU Parliament is elected by citizens
|
| - EU commission is selected by national governments and
| approved by the EU parliament
|
| - EU council are the heads of government of the member states
| ur-whale wrote:
| Glad to see you've drunk the kool-aid.
|
| Oh, but wait, can you actually have a popular initiative
| referendum in the EU?
|
| Oh, but wait, last time there was one, the legitimized
| institution you seem to cherish so much decided to basically
| ignore the outcome.
|
| Oh, but wait, where does it say in the EU charter that the
| commissioner has _any_ kind of power to stick her nose in
| health management policies ? Where ? That did not stop her
| from telling European how they should behave during COVID.
|
| The EU is a _deeply_ undemocratic institution, can 't wait
| for it to collapse under its own weight.
|
| With minor exceptions, the power this institution holds over
| some (not all, thank god) people of Europe is completely out
| of the hands of said people, which basically amounts to the
| exact same thing as not being elected.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| Do everyone a favor and move somewhere else.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Do everyone a favor and move somewhere else.
|
| I already have.
|
| A very long time ago.
|
| Can't think of a single day of my life I regretted that
| decision.
|
| Doesn't mean I'm indifferent to seeing an entire
| continent of people getting shafted deep and hard by
| their so-called elected institutions.
|
| But no worries: AI will continue to be invented
| elsewhere, and in a large part by people who were
| educated in the EU and ran like rabbits as soon as they
| could to places where innovation is neither illegal not
| taxed to death.
| PentelicoMarble wrote:
| Where did you move?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Do you say the same to americans who criticize the US?
| What a weird talking point. Not that I agree with him in
| the first place, but still
| mvdwoord wrote:
| Also, I can only vote for the EP on candidates from my own
| country, who actively campaign under their own national
| party but they are part of a European party (regularly
| together with another party from my own country with which
| they pretend to disagree on national politics).
|
| If the EP was anywhere near democratic, I would be able to
| vote for any European candidate, and they would at least
| campaign for the European party they will be a part of,
| once elected.
| gpderetta wrote:
| None of the countries I'm familiar with allows you to
| vote for arbitrary candidates even on local elections.
| You can only vote for candidates that are running for
| your local area. At least on Italy the major national
| parties definitely are not members of the same EU party.
| I'm pretty sure that's the case in UK as well.
| tfourb wrote:
| So you don't understand how it actually works.
|
| There are no "European Parties" at least not how one
| generally understands the term in national politics.
| Candidates for the EU parliamentary election are elected
| on the ticket of national parties. Those parties are free
| to form alliances (on a national basis) but most don't.
|
| Once a candidate is elected and joins the parliament,
| they usually join a faction of like-minded MPs from
| across the EU, i.e. conservatives, liberals, social
| democrats, greens. Those are NOT parties but function
| similar to i.e. the faction structure in German
| parliament which may also contain members from multiple
| parties. Politicians from different national parties may
| end up in the same faction in EU parliament but that is
| rare.
|
| This is more or less the same how it works for national
| elections in many countries, it is called "representative
| democracy", simply adapted to make sure that the EU
| parliament is roughly representative of the EU
| electorate.
| mvdwoord wrote:
| Voting in NL is possible on all candidates, nationwide.
| As it should be.
|
| Wether it is a faction or a party, two Dutch parties who
| claim to be different when campaigning for Dutch
| elections, sit and vote happily together in the EP.
|
| It is all representative democracy, they gave us a direct
| vote in a referendum, two or three times. The outcome was
| not as desired, apparently, so it was either done again,
| or ignored.
|
| The sales pitch is that we should all be Europeans,
| voting for European governance... So let me vote on
| Europeans, not just dutchies. May be different in other
| countries but that makes no sense to me. A lot of
| countries allow voting on anyone who is an eligible
| candidate for the thing being voted for. Unless, e.g.
| like for the us Senate, where, iiuc there is an equal
| representation of two senators per state.
| developer93 wrote:
| I can only vote for candidates standing in my region,
| both in UK and Germany.. I'll grant the UK could be more
| democratic too, but the EU is as democratic as at least
| some of it's member states.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Political legitimacy does not come mimicking the methods by
| which leaders are selected.
|
| Some of the strongest sources of political legitimacy are:
|
| * Continuity with past institutions. For example ,the 98th
| Congress was legitimate because it succeeded the 97th
| Congress.
|
| * Shared values and norms. For example, NATO suffered a huge
| loss of legitimacy due to the second Iraq war.
|
| * Ability to identify public threat actors, and the ability
| to legitimately use violence (like incarceration) against
| them. For example, states with strong elements of organized
| crime usually suffer from low political legitimacy. However
| when organized crime becomes part of the state, legitimacy
| can increase (Hezbollah, the Chicago Outfit, and the Yakuza
| are examples).
|
| * Self constraint by clearly defined norms. Some things just
| "aren't done." In America it would be scandal if a judge was
| elected because of the persons ability to fundraise. But
| that's very common for ambassadors. For judges it's just "not
| done."
|
| If a foreign power invaded and held elections, it's unlikely
| the elections would be seen as legitimate, even if they were
| free and fair.
|
| This is why both the US and Soviet Union were unable to hold
| legitimate elections in thier respective zones in Germany
| until the occupation ended.
|
| Elections are really good example of how simulating an
| institution does not confer legitimacy.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| You've missed another obvious example: fiat currency.
| adastra22 wrote:
| > For example, NATO suffered a huge loss of legitimacy due
| to the second Iraq war.
|
| NATO had no involvement in the Iraq war.
| developer93 wrote:
| Yes but your original comment said mostly unelected, which
| isn't true.
| camillomiller wrote:
| I do not understand why this comments are so common here and
| never flagged. This is just anti-EU FUD and yet it's constantly
| upvoted.
| lompad wrote:
| Because the EU's overall attempt to disempower US tech giants
| is something SV simply doesn't like at all. A significant
| share of the users here are heavily invested in those
| companies - financially and otherwise - so obviously they
| won't ever encourage a future where tech companies are a part
| of society like every other one, without particular power.
|
| And the more angry rants we get from SV-folks, the better we
| know that we're on the right track.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Not really, the US is still a bigger market, but even
| leaving that aside, I see more handwringing from actual EU
| citizens as to how this will impact their local markets and
| jobs, than from anyone actually in the US [0][1]. It's more
| like those in the US are simply pointing and laughing at
| the EU consistently shooting themselves in the foot rather
| than any actual disdain from them. It actually reminds me
| of those who make fun of cryptocurrency while those who've
| "invested" in cryptocurrency think we're just "mad" that we
| didn't make "gainz." No, mate, we're just laughing at
| people who fall for such misfortune.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38584508
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583016
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| It's not a democratic organisation. Some parts of it are
| elected but they're not where the authority or power is held.
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| No? Where is it held?
| Longhanks wrote:
| As a former EU citizen: Because it's true? The EU has failed
| to enable big tech competitors to grow on it's countries. And
| instead of fixing the political, socio-economical issues, it
| continues to bully a) the US (which delivers actual
| solutions/products) and b) its very own citizens with things
| like dismantling end-to-end decryption / mandatory full
| access to chats (mind you not for the EU politicians
| themselves, of course, see Biontech deals that von der Leyen
| "lost").
|
| And where is the EU citizens' election regarding said chat
| control? Where is the election regarding commission
| president? Would you think von der Leyen were actually
| elected president, had the population been given the chance
| to vote?
| miohtama wrote:
| AFAIK the actual final legislative text is not yet publicly
| available, so we do not know what was passed.
|
| But might change any moment.
| boobsbr wrote:
| What?
|
| How can legislation pass without the public knowing what is in
| it before it passes?
| dorchadas wrote:
| From what I understand, it's not passed yet. They've just
| reached a deal on the amendments that need to be added so it
| _will_ be passed.
| miohtama wrote:
| We do not know what amendments have been passed, as Germany
| and other countries were lobbying for more relaxed
| regulation after every AI company in the EU called them and
| told them the regulation was going to make them
| uncompetitive.
| miohtama wrote:
| > By 2022, there were examples that AI was actively harming
| people. In a Dutch scandal, decisions made by algorithms were
| linked to families being forcibly separated from their children,
| while students studying remotely alleged that AI systems
| discriminated against them based on the color of their skin.
|
| These were not AIs but rule-based systems with if elses. The
| current legislation is bad, because it tries to regulate the
| technology, not how it is used. Dutch government people should be
| responsible for the decisions they or their system produces, AI
| or no AI.
| phh wrote:
| > The current legislation is bad, because it tries to regulate
| the technology, not how it is used.
|
| That's not what the EU regulation does. As an example, High
| Risk Machine Translation will be regulated no matter how you do
| it. The standard underlying the EU's AI Act explicit mention
| that AI system can be anything from rule-based to machine
| learning and mention some other AI methods. The regulation is
| on task/usage not on the technology.
|
| Edit: "High Risk" in my example refers to the usage
| miohtama wrote:
| Thank you for the clarification!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > AI system can be anything from rule-based to machine
| learning
|
| Then why call it AI?
| osullip wrote:
| Why call anything AI?
|
| It's become commonly accepted to mean any algorithmic
| system. It's probably better to use an accepted umbrella
| term rather than multiple specific scientific ones in this
| case.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Fuzzy and misused words are pushed to muddy the
| semantics. Actual AI doesn't exist.
|
| If/else, case, and while statements are basic building
| blocks of automation and computational logic.
| Intelligence is far from anything we've done with
| computers. It is a parlor trick looking for money right
| now.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _Actual AI doesn 't exist._
|
| The word "actual" is doing a lot of lifting there.
| Artificial intelligence has existed for decades.
| Presumably you mean "artificial general intelligence",
| whatever that's even supposed to mean (it's subjective,
| and for many people it's a matter of _literal religious
| faith_ that humans have something called souls which
| machines can never possibly emulate, and therefore
| "actual AI" is literally impossible as far as they're
| concerned.) Well anyway... if you want to say AGI, just
| say AGI. AI is more general than that and the term is
| well established to encompass a great many methods and
| kinds of systems. Many kinds of AI are very primitive and
| seem trivial today; they are nonetheless "actual AI".
| zlg_codes wrote:
| I will not bend to the sloppy use of words to
| misrepresent technology. My words are not your putty to
| mold.
| pas wrote:
| Intelligence is the capability to form (predictive) models
| (to solve problems through evaluating strategies through
| the aforementioned model). General intelligence is the
| ability to do it over an arbitrary range of problems.
|
| Even an if-else tree is a model. Building the model based
| on data leads to high predictive power.
|
| AI is an okay term for this IMHO.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| "If-else rule-based systems" aka expert systems are an
| example of symbolic artificial intelligence e.g. _" Good
| Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence"_. Just because it
| doesn't use the newest most trendy methods doesn't mean it
| isn't AI, and even if you object to applying the AI label
| to these kind of systems, these systems are nevertheless
| valid targets for regulation.
|
| _" Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence"_ -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOFAI
|
| _" In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a
| computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a
| human expert.[1] Expert systems are designed to solve
| complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge,
| represented mainly as if-then rules"_ -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system
|
| _" Symbolic AI used tools such as logic programming,
| production rules, semantic nets and frames, and it
| developed applications such as knowledge-based systems (in
| particular, expert systems), [...]"_ - https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Symbolic_artificial_intelligen...
| ppaattrriicckk wrote:
| Because "AI" is a well-established academic field, and the
| definition by your quoted comment is in line with this.
|
| It's a very broad umbrella term, machine (and deep)
| learning are only subsets - although the main drivers these
| days.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| What we call "AI" today we called algorithms yesteryear and
| applications yesterdecade.
|
| It's all marketing, I think EU is right to accurately use the
| "AI" marketing term for what it is.
| phh wrote:
| > It's all marketing, I think EU is right to accurately use
| the "AI" marketing term for what it is.
|
| I think EU calling it "AI" is fine today. I'm more worried
| about the future. In 5 years when the hype word for this
| class of tools becomes Tchounka. The world will say that EU
| is late and they need to pass a Tchounka law. While the
| reality is that EU passed an automated data processing law
| and doesn't care about how it's done.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| AI has always been used to describe plain algorithmical
| things as well. See video games for example.
|
| But ultimately everything in life can be thought of as
| algorithm so it really doesn't matter. If it's artificial and
| it can solve problems beyond simple computations, it is AI.
|
| Humans are algorithms as well, just very complex and nuanced
| ones that we have a lot of trouble reverse engineering.
|
| I would say that a complex hardcoded algorithm that is used
| for a racing game is a stronger AI than a simple, small
| neural network for one specific narrow task.
|
| Intelligence = ability to solve problems, AI = something that
| is artificial and can solve problems beyond being a simple
| tool.
| fuglede_ wrote:
| Sounds what something someone might want to call an expert
| system?
|
| > In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer
| system emulating the decision-making ability of a human
| expert.[1] Expert systems are designed to solve complex
| problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented
| mainly as if-then rules rather than through conventional
| procedural code
| martingoodson wrote:
| Do you have any reference for this claim, or are you guessing?
| It was reported that the algorithm was a Gradient Boosting
| Machine by investigators who gained access to the code.
|
| https://www.lighthousereports.com/suspicion-machines-methodo...
| alach11 wrote:
| Well if you torture the analogy enough, you could argue a
| tree based model is a lot of if/else statements!
| GuB-42 wrote:
| According to the EU proposal, this is what they mean by AI:
|
| (a)Machine learning approaches, including supervised,
| unsupervised and reinforcement learning, using a wide variety
| of methods including deep learning;
|
| (b)Logic- and knowledge-based approaches, including knowledge
| representation, inductive (logic) programming, knowledge bases,
| inference and deductive engines, (symbolic) reasoning and
| expert systems;
|
| (c)Statistical approaches, Bayesian estimation, search and
| optimization methods.
|
| So rule-based systems (b) are considered AI for the sake of
| regulation.
| mikojan wrote:
| Aren't all current machine learning approaches statistical
| approaches using Bayesian estimation?
| dpflan wrote:
| What do you mean by "current"?
| kevindamm wrote:
| Not really.. they're often statistically based, but don't
| need to use Bayes' Theorem or be based on a Bayes Network.
| They are driven by expectation maximization and stochastic
| gradient descent, mainly. An autodifferentiation back-
| propagates the parameter update through a neural network
| model, but the network doesn't necessarily represent a
| Bayes Network.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| So every program ever made?
| miohtama wrote:
| Yes.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That's the idea, yes.
|
| It is not really about the techniques used but about what
| you are using these programs for. If law enforcement used,
| say, the average brightness of a picture of someone's face
| as a basis for suspicion, it could hardly be called AI, but
| it is nevertheless a highly concerning usage of technology
| and shouldn't be given a pass just because it is not
| advanced enough.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I'm sorry but I cannot see how to view this charitably.
| To me it clearly seems to be a way to enact further
| unjustified regulation on something that would otherwise
| be hard to create public support for, by using big new
| scary words like AI, even though it has massive overreach
| into more traditional programs.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| If you tell people the computer program that profiled
| them as a probable scumbag and denied them credit or a
| job was using methods from the 1980s instead of the
| newest neural nets, that won't change how they feel about
| it. Objecting to regulation of such systems because you
| think the term "AI" should be reserved for the newest and
| trendiest systems very "HN" and misses the forest for the
| trees. The EU is rightly concerned about the ways that
| computers empowered to make important decisions might
| impact people's lives might perpetrate injustice; that's
| what is important here. Not some whiny semantic nitpicks
| about what to call those programs.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| But don't you think that there should be regulation
| saying that delegating decisions to a technology system
| should make you fully responsible, and that growing
| capability of these systems make it more important to
| clarify that any "mistrusted the machine by accident"
| argument is null and void?
|
| For me, it's not important if the legal definition
| requires this term. It's not like automation and computer
| programs are being banned.
|
| It's the _decision_ part that justifies this legal
| definition IMO.
|
| It's like the difference between a human or an automated
| car running over people. Quite literally even.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I agree with your point the users are at fault, not the
| technology itself. It's the govt which was separating families
| wrongly and the schools who discriminated who should suffer,
| not the companies making the tech.
|
| That being said, this is a problem which regulation can be made
| to help solve. For example, a rule saying that any sold or
| licensed LLM to businesses needs to be run against a set of
| cleaning / filtering models (like the recently-released Purple
| Llama) before being packed up and sold / hosted. Maybe there
| can be an exception for individuals and exempt orgs (charities
| and religions may get an exemption, I could imagine).
| telmo wrote:
| > These were not AIs but rule-based systems with if elses.
|
| What is fashionable to call AI these days are ultimately rule-
| based systems with if elses. It just so happens that it's a
| bazillion of those, and they are created by gradient descent.
| mort96 wrote:
| And that they're not if-elses but nonlinear functions.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| The stupidest of the new rules:
|
| 1) AI Act includes bans on biometric systems that identify people
| based on "sensitive characteristics", such as sexual orientation
| or race (except for "law enforcement"). (LOL, so an AI isn't
| "allowed" to tell if a person is black, white or Asian?)
|
| 2) It also includes new transparency requirements for all
| general-purpose AI models and stronger rules for "very powerful"
| models. ("Yes, because with such 'great power' comes great
| responsibility).
| ginko wrote:
| >LOL, so an AI isn't "allowed" to tell if a person is black,
| white or Asian?
|
| Yes. I don't see what you find so funny about this.
| bequanna wrote:
| Race is one of the most important attributes used to describe
| a person of interest.
|
| Sex, race, height, build, hair, last known clothing
| simion314 wrote:
| And do you need an AI to guess your customer race or sexual
| preferences ? If is needed for the service (maybe you are a
| doctor)you just ask. If is illegal for you to ask and use
| someones race then it should not be legal for you to guess
| it and then use that guess in your algorithms.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If it is illegal to collect and use that information then
| you don't need to additionally regulate algorithms
| specifically...
|
| And if it is legal to collect and use that information
| then it seems nonsensical to ban the use of algorithms
| specifically...
| troupo wrote:
| Nope. That's not how it works.
|
| Even if it is legal to collect that information, it does
| not imply that it's legal (or desirable to begin with) to
| feed that information to a blackbox algorithm.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Hence I specifically wrote "use it"...
|
| The GDPR use "process it", which is generic enough to
| cover AI.
| troupo wrote:
| > The GDPR use "process it", which is generic enough to
| cover AI.
|
| Nope, it's not. Because, again, sending user data to a
| magic black box may be illegal. While processing it in
| other ways could be legal.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You are not replying to my comments. You are adding an
| additional constraint that wasn't in my initial comment.
|
| My point is that if collection and processing is
| regulated then that covers AI. And thus there is no
| "sending user data to a magic black box _may be illegal_
| " but my whole comment was that this wasn't needed. AI is
| just a tool, it's just automated processing.
|
| Btw, 'nope' passes off as rather dismissive and rude.
| troupo wrote:
| > You are adding an additional constraint that wasn't in
| my initial comment.
|
| No. I'm showing that your conclusions don't logically
| follow from the premise.
|
| > My point is that if collection and processing is
| regulated then that covers AI.
|
| No. No it doesn't.
|
| > but my whole comment was that this wasn't needed. AI is
| just a tool, it's just automated processing.
|
| And that, too, isn't entirely true, precisely because AI
| is a tool, and a _different one_. We always adapt or pass
| new laws and regulations for new, significantly
| different, tools.
|
| For example, just because you can process data doesn't
| necessarily mean that you can process it in any way by
| any tools available to you. "GDPR allows you process
| data" does not immediately imply "this data can be
| processed by AIs". There is a reason why I was "adding
| additional constraints". Because these constraints are
| why additional laws and/or regulations around AI are
| needed.
|
| For example, one of the stipulations of the AI Act is
| [1]: "AI systems shall be developed and used in a way
| that allows appropriate traceability and explainability,
| while making humans aware that they communicate or
| interact with an AI system as well as duly informing
| users of the capabilities and limitations of that AI
| system and affected persons about their rights". The
| reason being stories like this:
| https://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-scandal-serves-as-
| a-wa...
|
| That stipulation alone isn't covered by any existing
| laws. There are bits and pieces here and there about
| various processes in various contexts, but this act
| brings them all together in one coherent form applicable
| to AI systems (which are appropriately broadly defined in
| the act [2]).
|
| Or, there's an entire Article 5 explicitly prohibiting
| the use of AI in sensitive and outright harmful areas.
| Including things like banning them for large-scale
| suveillance except in very narrow scopes. Note that,
| again, there's undoubtedly pieces of this scattered
| around various regulations, but this one makes them clear
| and make them specifically applicable to AIs.
|
| That's why I keep repeating: no, the fact that someone
| allows to collect and process data does not immediately
| imply that this collection and processing can be done
| with AIs. Where applicable, this law references existing
| ones.
|
| [1] Quoting from this excellent article
| https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/the-truth-about-the-
| eu-ac...
|
| [2] Annex I: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52...
| simion314 wrote:
| >And if it is legal to collect and use that information
| then it seems nonsensical to ban the use of algorithms
| specifically...
|
| And a HN entrepreneur will say that they do not collect
| the race, a neuron somewhere in the AI will turn on for a
| specific race but it is not their fault, the input data
| had no race the AI deduced it.
|
| The laws regulate high risk stuff, it will prevent that
| HN entrepreneur to sell medical AIs , crime predicting
| AIs, car driving AIs etc just because they put a
| disclaimer that the AI might be wrong.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Collect it, store it, use it. QED.
|
| That's why drafting of laws is so tricky and important.
| You need to find the right way to make a general
| principle apply without having to spell every single
| possible case, which is impossible.
|
| But on those things I am convinced that there is no need
| to single out AI if the law is drafted so as to spell put
| general principles.
|
| On the other hand, AI can bring major benefits and, while
| we should be careful, we should allow "tech
| entrepreneurs" to bring those benefits to society.
| tpm wrote:
| Race is a social construct. It's used the way you describe
| in some societies, but not in others, and even if it is,
| the races have different definitions.
| malux85 wrote:
| It's not entirely a social construct, for example there
| are very clear genetic factors - you could use a
| clustering algorithm on genetic data to reveal there are
| very clear groups, regardless of which social culture is
| doing this clustering, the clusters would still emerge,
| because math.
|
| You're right that the borders are not well defined though
| - it is a probably distribution - just like the weights
| in a neural network are also a probability distribution
| tpm wrote:
| There are no clear genetic factors at all. They don't
| exist, because there are no clear biological delineations
| between 'races'. It's a purely social construct.
|
| You maybe could sort of define a group of people coming
| from the same _locality_ and having the same _history_ ,
| and they would have maybe some degree of biological
| similarity as well, but there would be a high number of
| those groups and even then it would be quite useless and
| with number of exceptions.
| peyton wrote:
| Come on, that's just today's Lysenkoism. We can talk like
| adults here.
| tpm wrote:
| Prove me wrong. Give me a way to detect race from DNA
| sample with 100% accuracy.
| malux85 wrote:
| Set the bar at impossible so you cant be proved wrong. No
| system anywhere is 100% accurate, and to demand that as a
| standard only shows your numerical illiteracy.
| tpm wrote:
| Why is it impossible? It's certainly possible to tell
| apart cat and dog DNA. If the race theory proponents
| argument hold water, the same must be possible for
| different races.
| malux85 wrote:
| > Prove me wrong. Give me a way to detect race from DNA
| sample with 100% accuracy.
|
| You implied that in order for you to be proved wrong, the
| test must have 100% accuracy. I was saying that 100%
| accuracy is an impossible standard.
|
| No tests in the world are 100% accurate, let alone in
| biology, the fact that you asked for this shows you are
| numerically illiterate
|
| Here is DNA clustering that shows race: https://4.bp.blog
| spot.com/-t9Va5ai9-A4/Xd0cmvRBL4I/AAAAAAAAu...
|
| Here is a link to the Kahn Academy course on statistics:
| https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability
| If you take this course, you will understand probability
| better, and then you wont commit the logical fallacy of
| "false dichotemy" where you try to reduce complexity to
| binary classes which is a view that is too simplistic to
| accuratly represent the distributions we are talking
| about
| tpm wrote:
| In that case races do not exist as meaningful biological
| categories. There is no proof of their existence.
|
| The reason I mentioned cats and dogs is you can tell them
| apart by their DNA with 100% accuracy.
| henriquez wrote:
| Ethnicity is not a social construct, and sometimes people
| use the word race as a synonym for ethnicity. There are
| clear genetic factors for ethnicity.
| tpm wrote:
| So you are saying you are able to clearly detect
| ethnicity of a DNA sample? Do you have anything to
| substantiate that?
| logicchains wrote:
| That's literally what 23&me do, they send you a breakdown
| of what % of various ethnicities you are based on your
| DNA. E.g. 95% Northern European, 5% Ashkenazi Jew.
| DanBC wrote:
| It's what they claim to do. The science is bunk. It's
| genetic astrology.
| tpm wrote:
| Yes and then they change it on each update. Do have a
| read of what their customers think about it, for example
| here: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0c
| PeurGB4WX...
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| Ah yeah. I forgot that with a good frequency two black
| people give birth to a white baby or vice versa.
| avalys wrote:
| You don't see anything funny about a biometric identification
| system that is not allowed to consider factors that would be
| considered indicative of "race"?
| ginko wrote:
| Not really. It's reasonable to ban the automatic detection
| of stuff like this.
| Levitz wrote:
| I honestly think it's stupid.
|
| Person A won't be identified because of being Chinese, he
| will be identified because of being a second generation
| immigrant that has a Chinese diet, interest in STEM and
| has a Chinese name.
|
| The reason there are racial stereotypes is because there
| are trends among different races and skin color is a very
| evident trait for humans to identify. AI will draw the
| trends from _everything else_ instead, which will draw
| the same picture, but skipping one specific parameter
| because it feels icky for humans.
|
| Assume an increased chance of someone being interested
| into the arts and liberal because of dyed hair? Sure!
| Assume an increased chance of knowing Spanish because of
| being Hispanic? Ew no that's prejudiced.
|
| It's so very stupid.
| simbolit wrote:
| A biometric id system which can only distinguish "clowns"
| from "non-clowns" and makes a lot of errors with regard to
| the images of famous billionaires.
|
| That is funny.
|
| Your example? Not funny at all.
| malux85 wrote:
| As with anything the devil is in the details - The word
| "tell" there is doing a lot of work.
|
| Does it mean "The AI should not have any bias towards any
| race"
|
| Or does it mean "The AI should not be able to distinguish
| whatsoever between two races"
|
| To me, the phrasing above "AI should not be able to tell"
| sounds like the latter, which is drastically wrong and I
| suspect difficult to prove.
|
| I think most people would agree it should not have bias, but
| it's important that in the wording of the law we don't
| eliminate functional stuff that's important - ie being able
| to determine race - for example there are certain medical
| conditions that affect different races at different rates, so
| the ability to distinguish is an important factor in
| analysis.
| simbolit wrote:
| As user siminion314 wrote: "If [it] is needed for the
| service (...) you just ask"
| developer93 wrote:
| I guess it's easier to require it not be able to
| distinguish at all than define what bias actually is and
| what the errors on that are.
| stale2002 wrote:
| The reason why it is funny is that almost by definition,
| anything that a biometric data detectors could detect would
| fall under the banned category.
|
| A bio-metrics detector, detects biometrics! And the law
| basically bans bio metrics detectors from detecting
| biometrics.
|
| It would be like if there was a law that said that
| restaurants can't sell food.
|
| Or if hammer regulations prevented hammers from being used on
| nails.
|
| Or that water could be used for anything _but_ making things
| wet or drinking.
|
| It is almost definitionally contradictory.
|
| That is indeed funny.
| phyrex wrote:
| It's funny because 1) any person you interact with face to
| face can tell your race and 2) what is the AI supposed to do
| if you tell it your race?
| huimang wrote:
| I still don't see the humor here.
|
| 1) The overall point is to not let AI use racial bias as a
| factor in its decision-making.
|
| 2) Actually, there are a lot of people whose "race" is
| vague. My buddy has been asked if he's <random, different
| ethnicity/nationality> at least 5 times that I've noticed.
|
| 3) "Race" is a social construct anyways. In the US, in
| modern times, we delineate "races" in a specific manner,
| but these delineations have varied across history and
| cultures. See the one-drop rule
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule).
| simbolit wrote:
| You do not explain why these rules are stupid, much less "the
| stupidest".
|
| Both rules, on first sight, make __a lot__ of sense.
| scrollaway wrote:
| "Transparency" is stupid for some people here because they
| cannot fathom that a technology significantly impacting
| people's lives should be auditable.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Transparency of the inner workings isn't really relevant -
| getting the right results is (whatever that means in any
| particular situation). It diverts a lot of effort from
| solving the actual issues.
|
| A transparent but poor decision is not really much better
| than an opaque poor decision.
| jddj wrote:
| I think that a world where that comment holds up to
| scrutiny would be very different to the one we've got.
|
| There's no magic objective moralism box that you can put
| a decision into and have it weigh its consequences and a
| little green or red light turns on.
|
| Good for whom? Under what assumptions was it made? In
| what context does it hold?
|
| All of that is transparency.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| That would be what regulation should address and not
| sidestep. Politics are there to make exactly those types
| of moral decisions. If you want certain behaviour from
| corporations using AI for something, it might be better
| to directly police the behaviour and not indirectly via
| peering inside tools.
|
| Creating mountains of documentations on the model for a
| regulator will not do that.
|
| Similarly, using the input/training data quality as
| vehicle to avoid, e.g., discrimination is weaker than
| directly targeting an outcome.
| jddj wrote:
| Like a ban?
|
| That could be a reasonable decision for people to make.
| If observability comes with accountability then it might
| eventually end up as the same thing.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| For some things, perhaps? Or some target
| accuracy/precision measures on others and fines for
| failing those. In the EU, individual harm can be quite
| cheap for corporations in some countries, that might also
| be an avenue.
| jddj wrote:
| Right, I can see your point now and my interpretation in
| my first reply wasn't very accurate at all. Sorry about
| that.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| No problem. I probably wasn't quite clear enough given
| the many angles of the problem.
| sabas123 wrote:
| > A transparent but poor decision is not really much
| better than an opaque poor decision
|
| But it is better, or rather more desirable, as it is
| easier to fix and testable against rules which might be
| very important in certain contexts.
| LexGray wrote:
| Because it assumes the data only has negative use. Asian and
| black communities are underserved in many ways from
| employment, medicine to education.
|
| Forbidding AI to identify race is forbidding AI tools to help
| serve those people better or even detect that they are being
| served poorly.
|
| It assumes even that targeted advertising by race or gender
| orientation is only exploitative and not seeking to help fill
| key needs.
|
| AI is only made by racists and religious jobs as a basic
| assumption seems like a very stupid assumption.
| developer93 wrote:
| But as I understood it's already established that many of
| the big initial training sets were highly biased, so it's a
| legitimate concern.
| pelorat wrote:
| It's illegal in most of the EU, maybe all of the EU, to
| register once "race", even for the police.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >Cognitive behavioral manipulation of people
|
| from
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/202...
|
| Aren't the valuations of Google,Facebook et al mostly based on
| their future capabilities to do exactly this when they feed
| everyone's data into their AI?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| The EU has a billboard campaign going recently with pro-EU
| messages and utopian imagery which is also be cognitive
| behavioural manipulation of people (manipulating their thoughts
| and behaviour (voting) to be more pro-EU).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Do you have any sources on that? I wouldn't be surprised
| though, with populism and Euro-skepticism at all time highs.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| It's this one, "you are europe":
|
| https://you-are-eu.europa.eu/index_en
|
| The images and slogans in the 4 pictures are what I have
| also seen on billboards.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| I saw one in Sweden recently and thought it was weird.
| Didn't realise it was part of such a campaign. Feels
| totalitarian.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Feels totalitarian._
|
| Meh, it's just propaganda and not all propaganda is
| minted by totalitarian regimes. The US/west also minted
| their own during the cold war.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US/west also minted their own during the cold war.
|
| And before and after, its not like the Cold War was in
| any way unique in seeing the US make propaganda.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Could you share some links about this?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| See my comment to FirmwareBurner.
| dgellow wrote:
| The EU doing a basic advertising campaign is somehow
| equivalent to mega corporation manipulating people's behavior
| (to their own benefits) by controlling their content feed?
| Your comparison dilutes terms so much that the whole issue of
| algorithmic content feeds is lost.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Most advertising is manipulation.
| brookst wrote:
| *all
|
| If advertising did not change behavior, it wouldn't be a
| thing.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Content feed: text and images you see when you look at your
| computer/phone
|
| Outdoor billboards: text and images you see when you go
| outside and look around
|
| I don't see what is dilutive about this comparison, seems
| about equal to me (except outdoor advertising is worse
| because you can't avoid it by not visiting certain
| websites). My broader point, I guess, is that the intended
| interpretation of the word "manipulation" seems to be
| restricted to "manipulation we disagree with".
| developer93 wrote:
| While billboards are annoying, a) everyone sees the same,
| they aren't tailored, b) they aren't as ubiquitous, most
| people don't spend as much time looking at billboards as
| they do at various feeds and c) they are only show 1
| advert, I would say an equivalent to a feed would be
| every billboard in a part of a city showing an advert
| that sells the same thing in a slightly different way.
| afavour wrote:
| That quote is missing some context, the term is used in a
| section on "systems considered a threat to people", the
| examples it gives are specifically behavioural manipulation to
| do something dangerous like violence. It's not just any attempt
| to change someone's mind on something, that would make all
| advertising illegal.
|
| I agree the wording is too vague, though.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| > that would make all advertising illegal.
|
| I'd vote for someone pushing that.
|
| As a bonus with all those American ad-driven malware driven
| out of the market there would definitely be room for European
| companies to compete on delivering actual value
| Spiwux wrote:
| Great. Glad to see we're still world leaders at shooting
| ourselves in the foot. It makes sense to regulate AI use in
| critical infrastructure and flat out outlaw use of AI to
| manipulate public opinion, but that's where it should have
| stopped.
| stevoski wrote:
| They sure do pass a lot of new rules these days about sweeping.
| espe wrote:
| > containing the downsides of Silicon Valley's latest export
|
| through which political lense do i have to look in order to put
| it like this? there is decades of european (continuing the bloc
| thinking) research and braindrain (and wasted opportunity) going
| into this.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| As someone living in Europe, I don't know if I should laugh or
| cry.
|
| The upside: From an investing perspective, the more regulations
| the EU comes up with, the more US software companies are a safe
| bet.
|
| The downside: Europe missed the internet and now will miss AI.
| How will that affect quality of life here?
|
| Is nobody in the EU bringing up the question why every single
| European citizen is dependent on US hardware, US software and US
| services? How we got here and where this will lead to, when
| software will not only be our "bicycle of the mind" but literally
| the car that drives us around, the nurse that cares for our
| health and the craftsman that builds our home?
| tremon wrote:
| _why every single European citizen is dependent on US hardware,
| US software and US services_
|
| Mostly because US companies keep buying their EU competitors.
| Nokia, Skype, Spotify, ARM, ASML and countless others all
| originated in Europe. The ones that remain European are the
| ones that cannot be bought so easily, like Matrix (UK) or
| Mastodon (DE).
| golemotron wrote:
| That makes the original point. They are bought by US
| companies because the US has facilitated tech and capital
| growth. In another world, the EU would've done better on that
| and bought US companies.
| conaclos wrote:
| We certainly need more regulation to prevent this kind of
| buying. But that is clearly not the mood at the moment.
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| Is capital growth the most important goal we should set for
| ourselves as a society?
| tiahura wrote:
| An increase in productive capacity seems like a positive
| to me.
| golemotron wrote:
| Yes. That would've served Europe better too. Now they are
| in the embarrassing position of trying to regulate
| companies that aren't under their jurisdiction.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| There are reasons to live that don't include being
| exploited for profit.
| Slartie wrote:
| None of these companies except Nokia and Skype were even
| bought out by US companies. And those two are not exactly
| huge losses for Europe. The entire comment is BS.
|
| The US doesn't have that much of a lead when it comes to
| hardware, especially chips, and is as dependent on Europe
| as Europe is dependent on the US in turn. Both are
| dependent on Taiwan anyways.
|
| The US has a lead on software, mostly due to an inherent
| advantage of having a large domestic market with mostly the
| same rules everywhere, whereas the European market is as
| big in total, but unfortunately is divided into many
| smaller markets with fairly large differences and cannot be
| captured as quickly as the US market. This gives companies
| which scale nearly effortlessly from a tech perspective
| (modern software based startups) a huge advantage in terms
| of the available headroom for quick, initial growth. This
| advantage is largely irrelevant in industries where
| physical stuff must be produced and which are therefore
| hard to scale anyway, but it is almost a guarantee for a
| dominant role in the realm of SAAS.
|
| So, no - there is no other world where Europe would have
| bought out US companies, at least not if we talk about
| Google, Salesforce, Oracle, etc., and if we talk about a
| similarly-structured US and EU.
| lackbeard wrote:
| Isn't ASML a Dutch company? I can't seem to find any evidence
| they've ever been sold.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Neither Spotify, Arm, or ASML have been bought by US
| companies.
|
| This is easily shown by their Wikipedia pages.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Arm being the one that's currently listed on the nasdaq
| exchange and otherwise owned by softbank isn't a totally
| compelling example of a European company
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Just because it lists in the US doesn't mean it's a US
| company.
| Slartie wrote:
| It is also not a US company. Where it's listed doesn't
| matter much. It matters where a) headquarters and other
| significant physical presences are located and b) where
| the majority shareholders reside. In that regard it is
| largely a European, and partially a Japanese company.
| dgellow wrote:
| You may want to review your info, these companies haven't
| been bought out by US corporations
|
| edit: I mean other than Nokia and Skype of course
| s3p wrote:
| Ah yes I forgot how dependent the world is on _checks notes_
| Skype and Nokia
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Do you know what Nokia does as a company nowadays? You
| might be surprised when you find out.
| tudorw wrote:
| We got BAE Systems and QinetiQ so...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Neither is EU.
| elteto wrote:
| > Is nobody in the EU bringing up the question why every single
| European citizen is dependent on US hardware, US software and
| US services?
|
| And even more concerning is the dependence on US aid and
| weapons for Ukraine. How Europe doesn't see Ukraine's invasion
| as an existential threat is beyond me.
| api wrote:
| If isolationists like Trump come to power in the US and do
| things like pull out of NATO, Europe might be suddenly in
| serious trouble.
|
| This is not a far fetched possibility. Even if Trump loses or
| isn't even on the ticket, an increasing number of younger
| Americans are opposed to overseas involvements including some
| on the left side of the spectrum. Ballooning US national debt
| interest and social security issues could force the US to
| make steep cuts in places like military and overseas aid.
| simion314 wrote:
| You need to remind those americans that Europe buys a lot
| of military crap from USA, pulling from NATO might cost USA
| more, and frankly Europe had a lot to pay from USA
| operations around the world by sending peace keeprs there
| or by having to handle the refuges.
|
| I would be that pulling from NATO will not make those
| military money be moved into healthcare, I heard this story
| with Brexit.
| FredPret wrote:
| European nations might buy a lot of hardware from the
| States, but the US also maintains a large and very
| expensive military presence there, and everywhere.
|
| So if military relations cool down, the US pulls out of
| Europe, and Europe exclusively buys its own arms, it
| might actually save the US money.
|
| But that seems a little far-fetched. There's a lot of
| transatlantic banter on the internet but when the chips
| are down, the West will likely pull together yet again.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Culling American military bases overseas would also
| reduce the risk of American politicians capriciously
| choosing to use those military bases as the staging
| points for military adventurism; the "War on Terror" was
| greatly facilitated by those bases. As somebody who
| thinks that 'war' was a disaster for the interests of
| average Americans, I would not be sad to see the means
| for America to wage foreign wars greatly diminished. I
| simply don't trust the American political system to be a
| responsible steward of that much global military power.
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| You must live in a bubble if you think that EU leaders don't
| see the invasion of Ukraine as an existential threat... Do
| you get all your news about what happens in Europe from HN?
| edrxty wrote:
| Not OP but just going off the numbers, the US has been
| contributing more military aid than all other countries
| combined. I'm glad everyone is supporting them but a bunch
| of the European countries dragged their heels through the
| first several months of the war while the US was sending
| stuff by the ship load.
|
| I get that the US is one big war machine but it's not like
| the EU doesn't have anything to give, they just decided
| that their own territorial defense was more important even
| though any supplies would be going towards fighting the
| only threatening aggressor in the region.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I think the problem is that EU countries don't have much
| military themselves to begin with.
| edrxty wrote:
| They have a lot more than they're giving. Almost
| everything so far has been old models that were already
| replaced
| tiahura wrote:
| Are there predominately ethnically Russian regions in Germany
| or France on their border with Russia?
|
| I think Berlin and Paris are fine for the foreseeable future.
| Scea91 wrote:
| World borders would look quite different if they were based
| on majority language. Would you redraw them all? Also, do
| you not consider anything east of Germany part of Europe?
| Wouldn't you be worried if you were Finland or one of the
| Baltic states?
| developer93 wrote:
| Also I find it hard to believe that Putin wouldn't come
| up with another excuse after that one ran out.. Did you
| see the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
| ?
| apwell23 wrote:
| > How Europe doesn't see Ukraine's invasion as an existential
| threat is beyond me.
|
| Weren't we told that the whole war is about food exports from
| ukraine which euro countries like germany depend on.
|
| Is the 'food is new oil' narrative not well accepted. Places
| like usa cannot export to germany because farmland and rivers
| have been poisoned by gylphosate
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| "Poisoned by glyphosate"
|
| Fine starve then? I think most reasonable people would eat
| food from America over starving.
| apwell23 wrote:
| most ppl aren't germans. Germany banned glyphosate.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| EU has very strong agriculture subsidies, it certainly does
| not rely on food imports for basic goods.
| developer93 wrote:
| The whole European food mountain was a thing. And we're
| still wasting plenty of food, we're not going to starve
| any time soon.
| Joeri wrote:
| How exactly do you see Russia as an existential threat to the
| EU? Putin does not seem interested in conquering the EU, at
| all. He's never mentioned anything of the sort that I know
| of, and he's not the guy to mince words about his intentions.
| He's not even really interested in conquering all of Ukraine,
| because he did not at any time mobilize the kind of force
| that would be needed for such an endeavor.
|
| I mean, yes, Russia's nukes are an existential threat, but to
| the whole planet, not just the EU.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| The EU doesn't aspire to economic or commercial success. It's
| an ideologically motivated socialist state with no real ideas
| for how to fund a high quality of life for the majority, but
| that's OK because the stated objective is equal quality of
| life, not high quality of life.
|
| Except for the few people on the top of the hierarchy, they
| warrant maximum quality of life as is traditional in such power
| structures.
| robswc wrote:
| This is the vibe I got. For better or worse, it seems people
| in Europe enjoy/pursue equality more than individual success.
| I know many people that move to the US to "escape" that
| system though and they've been quite successful.
| kranke155 wrote:
| The EU isn't a state at all. Getting tired of usually
| Americans talking about the EU as some kind of superstate.
| It's nothing of the sort.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| The EU is not in anyway socialist. It's a neoliberal
| Capitalist federation, explicitly so in all its founding
| documents and philosophy.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| You didn't actually read the announcement. The EU is only
| regulating "high risk" uses of AI - i.e. facial recognition as
| used by law enforcement. Your spicy autocomplete and image
| generators should be safe.
|
| Also, the EU didn't "miss the Internet", it got muscled out of
| the Internet by American tech monopolies.
| chatmasta wrote:
| > the EU didn't "miss the Internet", it got muscled out of
| the Internet by American tech monopolies
|
| This sounds like a distinction without a difference. The
| American tech monopolies only became monopolies because of
| their first mover advantage. The EU had no Internet companies
| with first mover advantage... in other words, they missed the
| Internet.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Monopoly building is not a function of first-mover
| advantage. In fact, being the first mover is usually a
| disadvantage, because you have to figure out how your
| business model is going to work. Late movers can just copy
| it but better.
|
| Going down the list of US tech companies:
|
| Google did not have first-mover advantage. They were
| actually very late in search. They won search by having a
| superior algorithm and, more importantly, enough business
| discipline to not deliberately ruin it. More importantly,
| with the exception of Gmail, every other successful arm of
| Google has been a startup that they bought and scaled up.
| In some cases, notably YouTube, they were even competing
| with the company they'd later buy because they couldn't
| build the business themselves.
|
| Apple did _technically_ have first-mover advantage, given
| that they 've been around in personal computing since the
| late 70s, but they blew it so hard they nearly went
| bankrupt. The Apple we know about today was destroyed and
| rebuilt by NeXT and Steve Jobs buying Apple with Apple's
| money. Even then, a good chunk of their success has been
| due to their purchase of several chip and core design firms
| that give the iPhone an edge that competing phone
| manufacturers can't buy. Even the first iPod was designed
| by someone else and bought by Apple.
|
| Microsoft... also wasn't a first-mover. OK, they were there
| at the start of PCs selling BASIC interpreters, but the IBM
| PC DOS you probably are thinking of as their "first OS" was
| SCP[0] QDOS, which they bought and customized for late-
| moving IBM. The same story goes for the Internet - they saw
| Netscape Navigator, got scared, bought NCSA Mosaic,
| rebranded it to Internet Explorer, added a bunch of
| nonstandard extensions, and integrated it deeply into
| Windows to kill Netscape dead.
|
| Is there a pattern here? Yes - that monopolies form because
| companies can buy instead of build. Why this happened in
| the US and not the EU is simple: the US stopped enforcing
| its antitrust laws and gave tech companies a regulatory
| pass in the name of the "future". This is not the EU
| missing the Internet, this is the EU being the victim of
| cheating.
|
| [0] Seattle Computer Products, which I'm assured is not a
| front of the SCP Foundation
| chatmasta wrote:
| Of the companies you claim weren't first-movers, your
| counterexamples of the "real" first-movers were also US
| companies. This would be a more relevant argument if some
| EU companies were first-movers but then got "muscled out"
| by US late-movers that became monopolies (and an even
| better argument if the EU companies were impeded by EU
| anti-trust rulings against them). But that's not what
| happened, because there were no EU first-movers, nor were
| there any anti-trust enforcements against any would-be EU
| first-movers... It's like saying you lost a race because
| your opponents cheated, when you weren't even at the
| starting line.
|
| > the US stopped enforcing its antitrust laws and gave
| tech companies a regulatory pass
|
| So the EU _did_ enforce its antitrust laws during that
| time, and thus stopped any EU tech companies emerging as
| monopolies? Can you provide an example? (In fact the only
| anti-trust ruling I remember from early Internet era was
| from the US, against Microsoft.)
|
| Besides, has US ever considered anti-trust law in the
| context of the international market? Do they even have an
| obligation to do that? The government has a
| responsibility to its own citizens. And if what you say
| is true, that US neglecting to enforce anti-trust law
| facilitated US tech monopolies, then perhaps US citizens
| benefitted in the long term. Certainly I'd rather be a
| citizen of the country that's the dominant economic power
| than the subjugated one in decline... and it's not like
| those tech monopolies halted innovation in the US; on the
| contrary, it's thriving. The US has the highest levels of
| high-tech investment, the highest salaries, the latest
| tech...
| Slartie wrote:
| I would agree with this comment, except for the last
| part. Antitrust law enforcement is not the critical part.
| Uniform market size is.
|
| The US has a lead on software mostly due to an inherent
| advantage of having a large domestic market with mostly
| the same language, rules and expectations everywhere,
| whereas the European market is about as big in total, but
| unfortunately is divided into many smaller markets with
| fairly large differences which cannot be captured as
| quickly as the US market. This gives companies which
| scale nearly effortlessly from a tech perspective (modern
| software based startups) a huge advantage in terms of the
| available headroom for quick, initial growth. This
| advantage is largely irrelevant in industries where
| physical stuff must be produced and which are therefore
| hard to scale anyway, but it is almost a guarantee for a
| dominant role in the realm of SAAS.
|
| The remaining conclusion of yours is true: if you grow
| faster, you can buy. If you grow slower, you are being
| bought.
| quadcore wrote:
| Absolutely. I think we are not going to see the end of that
| inflation anytime soon because of that. We have nothing to put
| in front of Google, Apple, Microsoft. Nothing.
|
| The issue though is we need to federate. We are not Europe yet
| really but a bunch of small countries. The political setup is
| not there for big tech companies to thrives.
| chaseha wrote:
| federated but united... we kinda already are, no? see all the
| state level privacy laws
| mike_hock wrote:
| > US hardware
|
| Chinese hardware.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > Europe missed the internet
|
| What the EU doesn't have is large scale social networks, and
| large scale "infrastructure" companies (the likes of Google and
| AWS) but it is missing less than what your average US
| perspective sees. No wonder most US companies sell a lot to
| Europe (including B2B).
|
| > is dependent on US hardware, US software and US services
|
| True. And the US (and the rest of the world) is dependent on HW
| produced on TSMC and assembled in China. It truly sucks
| aenis wrote:
| Which in turn relies on litography equipment made in the EU
| and Japan.
| charles_f wrote:
| Disregarding the regulation itself - the logic you describe
| here is that non-EU competition isn't regulated, so EU
| shouldn't regulate anything to be competitive.
|
| 1- the EU didn't "miss the internet" because of regulatory
| policies. At least not regulations on the Internet.
|
| 2- even if that was the case, does it mean the EU should always
| level itself by the worst competitors?
|
| 3- and then, assuming it deregulated LLM, how would would it
| lead to a place where EU would suddenly becomes competitive on
| that market?
| adastra22 wrote:
| It missed the internet in the sense that it is near
| impossible to create an innovative (read: disruptive)
| internet company within the context of EU and member state
| regulations. So people don't bother and entrepreneurs
| emigrate to the USA.
|
| It looks like the EU is preparing to miss AI as well.
| bawolff wrote:
| There are a lot of other countries that are not EU which
| also have minimal big internet companies. Did all of them
| regulate badly too?
|
| I suspect its more the power of consolidation and first
| mover advantage.
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| And having a common language across the market.
| layer8 wrote:
| I could honestly do with less disruption by internet
| companies.
| svetb wrote:
| Europe "missed the Internet" (and the US didn't) because of
| various underlying factors - smaller/more fragmented
| markets, a more muted entrepreneurial culture, shallower
| pools of capital, etc.
|
| I don't think the fact that Google, Amazon, and Facebook
| were built in the US is down to EU regulations.
|
| It's no more difficult to start a tech company in Europe
| than it is in the US, and it's generally no more onerous to
| grow it, from a regulatory perspective. But ambitious
| entrepreneurs often head to the US in order to tap into a
| larger market and more developed ecosystem.
|
| So I'm not sure the analogy is that valid. But yeah, I do
| think that EU regulation of AI may be an additional factor
| that skews the playing field.
| bluelu wrote:
| There is no fair use for copyright in Europe. That's the
| reason why we don't have any google here, and won't have any
| AI company here.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| At least in the UK we do -
| https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright
|
| DeepMind was also founded here, 5 years before OpenAI was.
| danenania wrote:
| Some level of regulation clearly is necessary, but it's also
| clear that it's possible to over-regulate (or mis-regulate)
| to the point that your regulations become meaningless because
| the activity you're attempting to regulate simply stops
| happening due to the added burden.
|
| It's sometimes a bit hard to tell whether the EU's goal is to
| regulate tech in a way that still promotes its development
| and creates a net good for society or to just stop most
| development of new tech within the EU wholesale.
|
| I've strongly considered moving from the US to the EU (Spain)
| since there is a lot to love about the culture, but the
| bureaucracy and arbitrary/capricious nature of regulations
| make it hard to justify trying to run any kind of innovative
| business there unless you have enough funding to pay a team
| of lawyers to protect you.
| seydor wrote:
| it did miss the internet, and partly thanks to uncompetitive
| regulation. You will not find the equivalent of gdpr that
| targets tourism or car manufacturing or fashion because those
| are large moneymakers in europe. Conversely, no large
| subsidies for internet or AI either. These industries don't
| just appear spontaneously
|
| > 3.
|
| MistralAI is a european company. It makes an unregulated open
| source AI and they are proud of both , it s actually part of
| their mission. It worked and it s becoming increasingly
| popular and successful. How will mistral grow to the size of
| openAI etc?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The opposite is actually true, most likely the lack of
| regulation is why we don't have more European hardware and
| software. Look at Russia and China - they have much more
| onerous regulation, and have large popular local services
| (VKontakte, WeeChat). I'm not suggesting in any way we should
| want to be like China and Russia, but I think they prove that
| regulation doesn't prevent local business springing up to
| compete with international behemoths.
| snordgren wrote:
| Those countries simply forbid competitors from selling in
| their domestic markets.
|
| EU regulations apply equally to EU and non-EU companies, so
| they won't lead to homegrown tech champions. More likely they
| will cement the dominance of US tech giants because they're
| the ones who have the resources to follow these regulations.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Facebook was available in Russia up until the invasion of
| Ukraine. China doesn't directly block most such companies
| either, it imposes censorship and technology control
| requirements. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon operate in
| China, with Chinese subsidiaries, but they are nowhere near
| as dominant as they are in the rest of the world.
| usrnm wrote:
| Not exactly true, up until 2022 Google, Meta and others
| operated in Russia and were competing with Yandex and VK on
| a more or less even playing field
| 0xDEF wrote:
| >popular local services
|
| >Vkontakte, WeeChat
|
| Since 2008 big US tech companies have been a runaway GDP
| doubling success. It is laughable to compare them with VK and
| WeChat.
|
| The reason we Europeans should aim to have our own big tech
| companies is because we are currently missing out on the
| greatest wealth generation in history.
| seydor wrote:
| I think you misunderstand how EU works. In reality it s a
| social club where mediocre politicians become careerists and
| climb the social ladder with a practically unlimitd budget of
| german money. There is no dialogue with any society other than
| with the brussels bubble and sometimes european academia. Some
| ambitious people latch onto the popular matters in the media
| like privacy, AI, climate, blockchain etc, and naturally they
| want to become a part of it by creating ... rules.
|
| There was a time decades ago when EU seemed to have some
| cohesion, nowadays it s just ambitious individuals who want
| power for a few years and then go on with their lives to other
| endeavors. It's almost all process and a lot of marketing-speak
| these days. Really a lot of marketing-speak , that sounds
| frighteningly more and more like the ESG and DEI departments of
| corporates. It s become soulless
| 5kyn3t wrote:
| I often ask myself that too. The talent and infrastructure
| definitely exist in Europe. (until the people leave for the US)
| Is it the big VC money, or some magical governmental support
| (military-industrial complex)? is it the english language that
| gives the US-companies an advantage? is it the different
| mindset? I really do not know.
|
| It's very weird and also sad and a bit frustrating to see that
| the market is in favor of one country that seems to get
| everything. I'm still crying for Nokia.
| brap wrote:
| I remember not long ago during the large tech layoffs, people
| in France and Germany were proud that the regulations meant
| they couldn't be laid off, and looked down at other primitive
| countries without such regulations.
|
| I wonder how attractive it is for Google/Microsoft/etc to start
| new teams and hire engineers in those countries. Probably not
| so much because of the risk.
|
| I also wonder how these regulations affect salaries. For the
| same cost I would much rather hire an equally talented US
| engineer and avoid regulations holding me down. Therefore EU
| engineers must be cheaper to hire.
|
| Maybe EU citizens want to trade things like job security for
| fewer jobs and lower wages, but I feel like people mostly
| imagine regulation is consequence-free.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The difference in salaries is sooooo vast that it make sense.
|
| A new grad at AWS makes about 45k gross in Poland, 55k in
| Germany. That's about 1/3 what a junior makes in the US.
| 90-110k for L5 in Germany, 80k in Poland, and 250k-300k in
| US.
|
| It's a no brainer all things considered.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Great steps in the right direction. Now the EU only needs to
| ensure property is not stolen by ai companies. Essentially if you
| cant prove your model has been trained on content you have
| licensed then selling it should be illegal.
| Spiwux wrote:
| Guilty until proven innocent. Very thoughtful take.
| gumballindie wrote:
| It's called burden of proof. And usually sits with those
| selling products.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| In the US, the burden of proof is with the regulators, but
| there's higher liability than in the EU which is supposed
| to offset it. That usually applies to safety / fitness for
| purpose, though, not copyright: I don't think the arguments
| transfer from one to the other.
| Kiro wrote:
| You're on a forum called Hacker News. Abolish all copyright.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Indeed. Copying Is Not Theft.
| conaclos wrote:
| I could rephrase this way: Copying Is Theft if you made a
| lot of money with that. Copying Is Not Theft if you made a
| living of that.
| sabas123 wrote:
| But selling a copy is.
| deadbunny wrote:
| You're on a forum called Hacker News. Abolish all copyright
| except when it benefits me.
| stale2002 wrote:
| How about lets just get rid of all of it.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Sure, but abolishing all corpyright means that owned by
| corporations too. Let's see microsoft's source code. It won't
| be of quality, but as soon as that will be used for training
| ml i would agree to mine being used.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Go EU, make "The Right to Read" real life!
| etothepii wrote:
| > Those that pose a systemic risk will need to sign onto a
| voluntary code of conduct ...
|
| How can one _need_ to sign onto a _voluntary_ code of conduct?
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23991850/eu-ai-act-artifi...
|
| https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022...
|
| I was reading through this a couple of evenings ago to try and
| get up to speed.
|
| I find the _spirit_ of the law to be something I broadly approve
| of -- for example: "There are a number of applications where the
| use of AI is banned, like scraping facial images from CCTV
| footage, categorization based on "sensitive characteristics" like
| race, sexual orientation, religion, or political beliefs, emotion
| recognition at work or school, or the creation of "social
| scoring" systems." These things seem broadly good to keep at bay.
|
| However, laws are more than just what they intend - it's what
| they actually do, how they're enforced, their secondary effects,
| etc. People don't like being tracked without consent, but people
| haaate all the "This site uses cookies" popups.
|
| From that perspective, I am not so sure about all of this. The
| language feels like its grasping at straws a bit prematurely in
| an attempt to head-off a problem which isn't fully manifest yet.
| Yes, it's good to get ahead of this sort of thing, but, IDK, I
| just wasn't fully convinced the legalese knew what it was on
| about. It even admits as such, stating that it encourages using
| broad terminology to future-proof itself and encompass the rapid
| pace of innovation.
|
| Plus, yeah, as others have mentioned -- I feel EU is starting to
| litigate its way out of technical relevancy. It's one thing if
| the forefront of innovation were occurring there, and they were
| then dictating how that innovation should evolve, but that
| doesn't seem to be what's occurring. Technological progress is a
| cornerstone of strong GDPs and I'm starting to fear for the EU a
| bit in this regard.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| > People don't like being tracked without consent, but people
| haaate all the "This site uses cookies" popups.
|
| I thought that was the intent... surfacing ubiquitous tracking
| to direct consumer frustration at the practice itself.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't think so, because that consumer frustration has
| resulted in nothing. Nada.
|
| We click the popups and get annoyed at the EU, not at the
| website.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Eh true. I wonder how that is different than, say, the
| tracking notifications that Apple added to iOS. Consumer
| choice maybe?
|
| I guess they can also enforce a good UX by controlling what
| is listed/installable on the play store, so apps can't
| maliciously comply.
| F-W-M wrote:
| I always get annoyed at the website.
| developer93 wrote:
| To the point where I'll click away if they don't give me
| a way to opt out, or if I feel like they're taking the
| mickey too much. All those cookery websites that are so
| snooty about cookies as if there weren't 10 more similar
| websites where they came from...
| lemming wrote:
| I really don't, I definitely get annoyed at the website,
| and I get _way_ more annoyed at websites which make it hard
| to say no to the cookies easily.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This is the same argument used in America for why taxes and
| expected gratuity aren't included in the item price, and it
| has done nothing to fix the problem.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure I follow. Are you saying this is done by
| retailers to dissociate themselves from sales tax and make
| it obvious to consumers which part of the total price is
| the governments fault, or something else?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Loosely, yes. The historical reason is a lack of state
| sales tax for many states in the 20th century, however
| one of the main justifications for continuing this
| process is to highlight what portion of the price is
| sales tax. However, it has become incredibly evident that
| large chains abuse this for psychological reasons.
|
| In the EU and Japan for example, prices include tax,
| allowing for a more honest depiction of total cost to the
| consumer.
| troupo wrote:
| > in an attempt to head-off a problem which isn't fully
| manifest yet.
|
| It has already manifested. All the dangerous uses of AI etc.
| are already there and used all the time all across the globe
| from China to the US.
|
| > It's one thing if the forefront of innovation were occurring
| there, and they were then dictating how that innovation should
| evolve
|
| Doesn't the AI act specifically says: document your
| foundational models, and gives preference to opensource? It's a
| much better approach than the black box of OpenAI.
|
| ----
|
| > People don't like being tracked without consent, but people
| haaate all the "This site uses cookies" popups.
|
| And the law that mentions neither browsers nor cookies is
| responsible for this how exactly?
|
| That will be the main issue with EU AI Act, too: the industry
| will gaslight it, spread enormous amounts of FUD, will engage
| in years-long malicious compliance.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| This. Making tracking annoying to consumers is feature, not a
| bug.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > All the dangerous uses of AI etc. are already there and
| used all the time all across the globe from China to the US.
|
| If this is as bad as it gets then it wasn't so bad.
| jiscariot wrote:
| How many popup warnings will I need to bypass/accept in order to
| use my LLM of choice?
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Just a brief conversation where you'd need to make your case to
| a friendly EU-hosted LLM
| bilsbie wrote:
| What are the regulations exactly?
| error9348 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1733481002234679685
|
| > The EU AI Act negotiations ended. One contentious issue was the
| regulation of foundation models, particularly open source ones.
|
| > Kudos to the French, German, and Italian governments for not
| giving up on open source models.
|
| > Juicy part: "The legislation ultimately included restrictions
| for foundation models but gave broad exemptions to "open-source
| models," which are developed using code that's freely available
| for developers to alter for their own products and tools. The
| move could benefit open-source AI companies in Europe that
| lobbied against the law, including France's Mistral and Germany's
| Aleph Alpha, as well as Meta, which released the open-source
| model LLaMA."
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _which released the open-source model LLaMA_
|
| While this part is inaccurate, the open-source stipulations of
| the regulation is something I applaud too, as it would be too
| easy to have regulatory capture by the big companies such that
| only they could afford the licenses necessary to create AI and
| thereby have onerous influence over our lives. More software,
| especially of the critical variety like AI, should be open
| source.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| If you can't innovate, litigate.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| its almost like they want to send all of their talent to the US
| and Japan
|
| such a weird move
| Trombone12 wrote:
| It's for fairness, the EU has to handicap itself after the US
| decided to ban abortion and persecute trans people.
| __loam wrote:
| Good, fuck exploitative machine learning.
| nektro wrote:
| yay!
| zlg_codes wrote:
| "The algorithm" is going to be the next few decades' scapegoat.
| "It wasn't a human, it was a machine!"
|
| "...coded by a human."
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