One can and must discuss and challenge all these regulations, but this seems better than just sliding carelessly into some sort of mega-corp dystopia. It is good to have some balance of power. Is the EU perfect? Absolutely not, but neither are the corporates. Ideally, compromises will be found (and mostly they are found). Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen here? If this slows down the European economy, that’s a trade-off Europe has chosen to take (and yes, I’m very aware of the difficulties of fair representation in such a complex entity as the EU). We now have three big power blocks with very different politics and governance models. Isn’t that so much better than just playing one massive bet on a few big AI players? Honestly, I think it is exciting!
> Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen here?
Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with (example: forks of open models), this leads to selective enforcement and by extension corruption and loss of rule of law.
Regulation before the market has even settled down, we don't know if AI will be datacenter only, or open models everybody forks, modifies and runs locally.
> Regulation before the market has even settled down
The counter point would be: the major AI providers have seemingly also lost control of their creation. So at the very least both sides are doing things before they fully understand what they are doing. Also, looking at the (planned) IPOs and the share of AI in S&P 500, one could argue that while the market hasn’t settled, it already is a massive market. When should we start regulating? Eventually it will be too late
> Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with
Yes. Having worked with one EU authority, it’s still people who eventually do the enforcing. That has the risk of corruption but I have also seen repeatedly that they won’t do something if it violates common sense. As always, there is room for interpretation and enforcement and it will be used. Like with any good governance. And companies still can (and do!) sue
Started reading, saw “The timing is the story”, and my LLM-generated-spider-sense tingled. The piece is informative, but I now have no idea if the arguments are human or AI driven
I mean it is true that Europe is lagging behind in some frontier things, but if the price for catching up means uncontrollable mega corps it is not worth it. Europe also has some very high-tech companies so I think we are still good.
I doubt it’s the end of AI access in Europe. Even if they do fine them 3% of global turnover, that’s probably a small enough fraction of their European revenue that it’s worth the risk. After all if they drop European traffic it’s not like it’ll change their fixed costs, and the marginal cost to serve Europe is probably relatively small compared to their fixed costs.
I do think it’s most likely that they will end up fining the AI companies quite a bit under this act. It seems like a bit of a pattern with European legislation that disproportionately impacts American tech companies.
I really oppose the notion that “European legislation … disproportionately impacts American tech companies”. US tech has a profound impact on the lives of everyday Europeans while the US has almost no checks and balances in place for the tech industry. Europeans are ought to be able decide how they want to live their lives and build a society. This must include deciding how much influence American tech companies shall be allowed to have by passing laws for Europe.
The whole premise ignores how much the same companies are fined and settling for in the US, for many of the same reasons: privacy abuse, market abuse, societal abuse, worker abuse, etc. Pound for pound the recent Meta settlement has certainly skewed the numbers much higher for the US too.
Isn't part of " Europeans are ought to be able to decide how they want to live their lives" that they have the choice of using products of US tech companies?
Perhaps the fines themselves act as a de facto AI tax that some people have been trying to promote in the political sphere, and we'll see how successful it is.
It's a (successful?) lobbying attempt by Mistral. They are falling behind on tech and they want to win on another stupid EU law. You know what will happen next? There will be an exception carved in for "developing countries" ... like China.
Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models? Isn't the (de facto, underlying) point of the act to raise up homegrown companies like Mistral?
The article only lists US labs, I wonder if that was an oversight. Chinese models are also available to Europeans through API providers. Surely they risk fines too.. right?
The regulations apply foremost to closed models. Chinese companies mostly release "open models".
And regarding fines, well the track record for EU fines against any big tech companies, US or China, is abysmal. Even if the companies are fined, the fine goes uncollected or is slashed after the big press release.
Why would they not apply to all models? The models with downloadable weights aren’t “open”. Meaning no one can actually give a summary about their training content and security. Which is what they’re asking US labs.
Claude slop article aside, this act is one reason why some people say Europe is an open air museum, as it'd rather regulate itself to obscurity while its great works are behind it. Where is Mistral, Le Chaton Fat? They're not competitive anymore. Meanwhile China reaches ever forward because they know that speed and endurance is everything in a race, not shooting oneself in the foot.
The key problem for Europe is that they don't want to take strong enough actions against US tech to let their own actors develop. Which is how China has reached tech dominance, and how even a shithole country like Russia can have their own “tech” industry.
Even in a hypothetical world where they somehow killed off US tech completely, they still wouldn't have their own actors develop. There is no collective will, no risk taking mindset. The VCs are cowardly with capital, and people don't follow through on bright ideas. Taxes and regulations suffocate any progress and no one wants to do anything about it.
The EU would rather cruise off into perceived comfort and safety rather than attempt to stay relevant economically and on the world stage. Only when the region is unable to afford its own welfare will it start wondering where things went wrong.
The idea was that technology is now powerful enough, everything need not be just competition any more. The world could also work to let every human have a good life. Neither China nor America truly seem to have that goal, despite it being both possible and ethical. Europe at least did, based on our experiences of the horrors of the early/mid C20.
It's true that in the last 10 years that vision feels like it has crumbled. And the inevitableness of competition is coming back. International law and human rights are dissolving - rule based on power. This works well for anyone while it works for them - except for our souls, and longer term... It's hubristic and eventually empires fall. Europe has already experienced this, and remembers it.
Whether these empires will fall to global economic collapse from lack of co-operation, or environmental destruction from lack of charging for externalities, or from global war, or simply from out of control AI, remains to be seen.
But never question, it is possible to avoid all those. But we have to try to, not just cheaply go "competition good", because of the short term thrill of the win. Competition is good, and so is cooperation.
China and America's goals will not be influenced one bit by the EU bureaucracy. The only effect it will have it will make EU fall behind even further.
We'd need quite some changes in the EU to focus on actually winning at something again. Winning at the expense of some of the lofty ideals. I'd rather EU have a decent frontier model lab that plays to win, and steps on toes while doing so, than have a very elaborate bureaucracy that tries to prevent that from happening. Its no surprise the bureaucrats have the exactly opposite goals, and its sad that most of the population won't see the consequences of this conflict of interest until it's too late to do anything -- because the Americans and the Chinese have near AGI capabilities, plentiful energy sources, and, really, not a lot of reasons to remember where Europe is on the map.
This is a very naive viewpoint that does not understand that superintelligence is a race between the West and China.
While the EU is twiddling its thumbs about copyright, it is shooting its own side in the foot during the most important race in human history.
The pure absurdity of this is a reflection of how the EU routinely chooses short term safety and good vibes over long term prosperity and success. This mindset is why the EU has been utterly unable to compete for years -- and now, they want to impose their failed model on the actually successful Western companies.
You’ll get downvoted to oblivion but it’s true in endless ways even before AI. The EUs obsession with green energy and destroying nuclear in Germany, the wealth taxes, the bureaucracy, how it’s 10x easier to get disability than it is to start a corporation. Death by a thousand cuts. I don’t see this improving until real, visible pain is felt. They are so poor economically but the consequences are not being felt yet
Just my 2 cents. Nuclear was dead in Germany without political influence. The reactors where so old, that upgrading them to modern standard would have been a waste of money compared to renewables. France only works because the state helps out. UKs new reactors are financial suicide.
Everything else you might have a point. The EU behaves as if it has influence over companies abroad. Then its strategy might work and do some good. Sadly this is not the case. Instead we are getting isolated and loosing the AI battle bad while bureaucracy and regulations forces inventors to leave.
Nuclear in Germany was destroyed mostly due to unchecked Russian influence. Shroeder got rewarded by putting the final nail by getting all those board positions in Russia. And they had a reason to be blind to it since the industry does want Russian hydrocarbons.
And as sad of a story as it is, it's nothing compared to what Orange did. It will be a good showcase for the future how business is not the economy.
And it's not even just me who says this, this is an exact title I've seen online as well before, below.
The reality is Europe will tend towards stagnation while other superpowers continue trudging on, some with their help of their governments while others, even despite themselves and their governments.
The anti-EU comments are always the same shape, unable to separate the EU from individual countries and misattributing country specific policies to the entire EU. Only a few countries in the EU have wealth taxes, and it's not the EU who imposed them. Disability pensions are not easy to get and require a lot of medical paperwork and approvals in most EU countries. And what does "so poor economically" even mean?
Ha! That's pure nonsense propaganda. Show me where it is 10x easier to take disability than establish a company. Then show me how EU destroyed Germany's nuclear energy, while doing well in other countries.
If you can't you are no better than the russian and right-wing americans that push anti-EU propaganda.
I absolutely hate those bureaucrats, people who never built anything and just want to control, review, and develop their cottage industries of well paid lawyers one needs to retain to operate in the market. Same as with GDPR - absolutely no positive impact on actual privacy, but a lot of burden on everyone.
The worst part is, those people can't be voted out. Because of how EU works, the bureaucrats have an upper hand over the elected officials, and because of lavish compensation for the said elected officials, mostly bad people get elected anyway - those whos domestic careers have ended, or those whose parties want out of active politics, and somewhere "safe" where they can earn good money without causing any trouble. Thats a horrible system.
> Same as with GDPR - absolutely no positive impact on actual privacy, but a lot of burden on everyone.
Confidently wrong on this one; it has been very helpful for me to both extract data as well as exercise my right to be forgotten from various providers that would otherwise have no obligation to delete my data.
GDPR would be enough if money was the aim. Enforcement is pretty thin with that as well, not as if there weren't enough companies out there that can and need to be fined.
Enforcement is thin, but every large company operating in the EU pays for legal advice. It's a racket, if you are a large target you will do well to pay for external firms that employ people who personally participated in the establishment of the GDPR regime. This is a tax on the European business - one of many types.
One can and must discuss and challenge all these regulations, but this seems better than just sliding carelessly into some sort of mega-corp dystopia. It is good to have some balance of power. Is the EU perfect? Absolutely not, but neither are the corporates. Ideally, compromises will be found (and mostly they are found). Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen here? If this slows down the European economy, that’s a trade-off Europe has chosen to take (and yes, I’m very aware of the difficulties of fair representation in such a complex entity as the EU). We now have three big power blocks with very different politics and governance models. Isn’t that so much better than just playing one massive bet on a few big AI players? Honestly, I think it is exciting!
> Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen here?
Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with (example: forks of open models), this leads to selective enforcement and by extension corruption and loss of rule of law.
Regulation before the market has even settled down, we don't know if AI will be datacenter only, or open models everybody forks, modifies and runs locally.
And we won't know for a couple for years to come.
Absolutely fair points!
> Regulation before the market has even settled down
The counter point would be: the major AI providers have seemingly also lost control of their creation. So at the very least both sides are doing things before they fully understand what they are doing. Also, looking at the (planned) IPOs and the share of AI in S&P 500, one could argue that while the market hasn’t settled, it already is a massive market. When should we start regulating? Eventually it will be too late
> Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with
Yes. Having worked with one EU authority, it’s still people who eventually do the enforcing. That has the risk of corruption but I have also seen repeatedly that they won’t do something if it violates common sense. As always, there is room for interpretation and enforcement and it will be used. Like with any good governance. And companies still can (and do!) sue
[dead]
Started reading, saw “The timing is the story”, and my LLM-generated-spider-sense tingled. The piece is informative, but I now have no idea if the arguments are human or AI driven
Time to collect facts and start thinking for yourself again.
The age of written expertise influence is over.
It's a good thing - AI is in basically everything, it needs regulation.
By people who never built anything except bureaucracies?
I mean it is true that Europe is lagging behind in some frontier things, but if the price for catching up means uncontrollable mega corps it is not worth it. Europe also has some very high-tech companies so I think we are still good.
We should instead be governed by people who never built anything except giant repositories of stolen data?
1 reply →
I doubt it’s the end of AI access in Europe. Even if they do fine them 3% of global turnover, that’s probably a small enough fraction of their European revenue that it’s worth the risk. After all if they drop European traffic it’s not like it’ll change their fixed costs, and the marginal cost to serve Europe is probably relatively small compared to their fixed costs.
I do think it’s most likely that they will end up fining the AI companies quite a bit under this act. It seems like a bit of a pattern with European legislation that disproportionately impacts American tech companies.
I really oppose the notion that “European legislation … disproportionately impacts American tech companies”. US tech has a profound impact on the lives of everyday Europeans while the US has almost no checks and balances in place for the tech industry. Europeans are ought to be able decide how they want to live their lives and build a society. This must include deciding how much influence American tech companies shall be allowed to have by passing laws for Europe.
The whole premise ignores how much the same companies are fined and settling for in the US, for many of the same reasons: privacy abuse, market abuse, societal abuse, worker abuse, etc. Pound for pound the recent Meta settlement has certainly skewed the numbers much higher for the US too.
Also, most US citizens want the same regulations as EU citizens, but only one of them have a functioning government.
3 replies →
Isn't part of " Europeans are ought to be able to decide how they want to live their lives" that they have the choice of using products of US tech companies?
5 replies →
Perhaps the fines themselves act as a de facto AI tax that some people have been trying to promote in the political sphere, and we'll see how successful it is.
Fines escalate when there is no compliance.
3 replies →
Poor American companies, who thinks of them when Chinese government does similar actions, and they play ball, regardless of the government actions.
It's a (successful?) lobbying attempt by Mistral. They are falling behind on tech and they want to win on another stupid EU law. You know what will happen next? There will be an exception carved in for "developing countries" ... like China.
Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models? Isn't the (de facto, underlying) point of the act to raise up homegrown companies like Mistral?
11 replies →
... downvoting this account to the oblivion may feel good but it doesn't turn reality into "conspiracy theory" LOL. I am glad you are feeling better.
1 reply →
The article only lists US labs, I wonder if that was an oversight. Chinese models are also available to Europeans through API providers. Surely they risk fines too.. right?
It doesn't say meta or thinking machines were asked. Does that mean asking them is futile, even though they are American labs?
The regulations apply foremost to closed models. Chinese companies mostly release "open models".
And regarding fines, well the track record for EU fines against any big tech companies, US or China, is abysmal. Even if the companies are fined, the fine goes uncollected or is slashed after the big press release.
I am looking as the DSA here...
Why would they not apply to all models? The models with downloadable weights aren’t “open”. Meaning no one can actually give a summary about their training content and security. Which is what they’re asking US labs.
1 reply →
Even Brussels knows that would be futile
Frustrating for EU companies trying to stay competitive globally.
Claude slop article aside, this act is one reason why some people say Europe is an open air museum, as it'd rather regulate itself to obscurity while its great works are behind it. Where is Mistral, Le Chaton Fat? They're not competitive anymore. Meanwhile China reaches ever forward because they know that speed and endurance is everything in a race, not shooting oneself in the foot.
The key problem for Europe is that they don't want to take strong enough actions against US tech to let their own actors develop. Which is how China has reached tech dominance, and how even a shithole country like Russia can have their own “tech” industry.
Even in a hypothetical world where they somehow killed off US tech completely, they still wouldn't have their own actors develop. There is no collective will, no risk taking mindset. The VCs are cowardly with capital, and people don't follow through on bright ideas. Taxes and regulations suffocate any progress and no one wants to do anything about it.
The EU would rather cruise off into perceived comfort and safety rather than attempt to stay relevant economically and on the world stage. Only when the region is unable to afford its own welfare will it start wondering where things went wrong.
2 replies →
You do realize geopolitics has made it kind of hard to have reasonable negotiations with the US in general, right? (cof cof Canada)
[dead]
The idea was that technology is now powerful enough, everything need not be just competition any more. The world could also work to let every human have a good life. Neither China nor America truly seem to have that goal, despite it being both possible and ethical. Europe at least did, based on our experiences of the horrors of the early/mid C20.
It's true that in the last 10 years that vision feels like it has crumbled. And the inevitableness of competition is coming back. International law and human rights are dissolving - rule based on power. This works well for anyone while it works for them - except for our souls, and longer term... It's hubristic and eventually empires fall. Europe has already experienced this, and remembers it.
Whether these empires will fall to global economic collapse from lack of co-operation, or environmental destruction from lack of charging for externalities, or from global war, or simply from out of control AI, remains to be seen.
But never question, it is possible to avoid all those. But we have to try to, not just cheaply go "competition good", because of the short term thrill of the win. Competition is good, and so is cooperation.
China and America's goals will not be influenced one bit by the EU bureaucracy. The only effect it will have it will make EU fall behind even further.
We'd need quite some changes in the EU to focus on actually winning at something again. Winning at the expense of some of the lofty ideals. I'd rather EU have a decent frontier model lab that plays to win, and steps on toes while doing so, than have a very elaborate bureaucracy that tries to prevent that from happening. Its no surprise the bureaucrats have the exactly opposite goals, and its sad that most of the population won't see the consequences of this conflict of interest until it's too late to do anything -- because the Americans and the Chinese have near AGI capabilities, plentiful energy sources, and, really, not a lot of reasons to remember where Europe is on the map.
This is a very naive viewpoint that does not understand that superintelligence is a race between the West and China.
While the EU is twiddling its thumbs about copyright, it is shooting its own side in the foot during the most important race in human history.
The pure absurdity of this is a reflection of how the EU routinely chooses short term safety and good vibes over long term prosperity and success. This mindset is why the EU has been utterly unable to compete for years -- and now, they want to impose their failed model on the actually successful Western companies.
7 replies →
You’ll get downvoted to oblivion but it’s true in endless ways even before AI. The EUs obsession with green energy and destroying nuclear in Germany, the wealth taxes, the bureaucracy, how it’s 10x easier to get disability than it is to start a corporation. Death by a thousand cuts. I don’t see this improving until real, visible pain is felt. They are so poor economically but the consequences are not being felt yet
Just my 2 cents. Nuclear was dead in Germany without political influence. The reactors where so old, that upgrading them to modern standard would have been a waste of money compared to renewables. France only works because the state helps out. UKs new reactors are financial suicide.
Everything else you might have a point. The EU behaves as if it has influence over companies abroad. Then its strategy might work and do some good. Sadly this is not the case. Instead we are getting isolated and loosing the AI battle bad while bureaucracy and regulations forces inventors to leave.
Nuclear in Germany was destroyed mostly due to unchecked Russian influence. Shroeder got rewarded by putting the final nail by getting all those board positions in Russia. And they had a reason to be blind to it since the industry does want Russian hydrocarbons.
And as sad of a story as it is, it's nothing compared to what Orange did. It will be a good showcase for the future how business is not the economy.
And it's not even just me who says this, this is an exact title I've seen online as well before, below.
The reality is Europe will tend towards stagnation while other superpowers continue trudging on, some with their help of their governments while others, even despite themselves and their governments.
https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/wil-europa-geen-openluchtmuseum-...
https://www.theprincetontory.com/is-europe-an-open-air-museu...
https://www.investmentofficer.lu/en/columns/gregory-kennedy/...
2 replies →
The anti-EU comments are always the same shape, unable to separate the EU from individual countries and misattributing country specific policies to the entire EU. Only a few countries in the EU have wealth taxes, and it's not the EU who imposed them. Disability pensions are not easy to get and require a lot of medical paperwork and approvals in most EU countries. And what does "so poor economically" even mean?
3 replies →
Ha! That's pure nonsense propaganda. Show me where it is 10x easier to take disability than establish a company. Then show me how EU destroyed Germany's nuclear energy, while doing well in other countries.
If you can't you are no better than the russian and right-wing americans that push anti-EU propaganda.
1 reply →
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I absolutely hate those bureaucrats, people who never built anything and just want to control, review, and develop their cottage industries of well paid lawyers one needs to retain to operate in the market. Same as with GDPR - absolutely no positive impact on actual privacy, but a lot of burden on everyone.
The worst part is, those people can't be voted out. Because of how EU works, the bureaucrats have an upper hand over the elected officials, and because of lavish compensation for the said elected officials, mostly bad people get elected anyway - those whos domestic careers have ended, or those whose parties want out of active politics, and somewhere "safe" where they can earn good money without causing any trouble. Thats a horrible system.
> Same as with GDPR - absolutely no positive impact on actual privacy, but a lot of burden on everyone.
Confidently wrong on this one; it has been very helpful for me to both extract data as well as exercise my right to be forgotten from various providers that would otherwise have no obligation to delete my data.
Europe on another money grubbing fishing expedition on US corporations.
Should the EU not enforce its own regulations? (which apply to all, not just US companies by the way)
GDPR would be enough if money was the aim. Enforcement is pretty thin with that as well, not as if there weren't enough companies out there that can and need to be fined.
Enforcement is thin, but every large company operating in the EU pays for legal advice. It's a racket, if you are a large target you will do well to pay for external firms that employ people who personally participated in the establishment of the GDPR regime. This is a tax on the European business - one of many types.
2 replies →
How's that Venezuelan oil?
Won't somebody think of the poor trillion dollar companies...