REGULATION OF AI BEGINS IN THE WEST AT LAST WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION

The world has been hearing about concerns regarding AI for months now, though it is fairer to say that it’s been longer and that recent months have only made the concerns more… shrill and urgent.  But it’s worth remembering that almost everyone with a smartphone has been using AI, more likely than not, for at least a couple years if not more.  But the capabilities of various iterations of AI are only getting faster, more powerful, and the resultant permutations have only really begun.  And so it begins at last, with the European Union formalizing the regulation of AI moving forward.

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EUROPEAN UNION MEMBERS SPENT 37 HOURS NEGOTIATING THIS LANDMARK STEP

Members of the European Union were able to hammer out a deal on this first significant regulation (in the West, anyway) of AI this past week.  The deal came together after 37 hours of negotiations involving delegates from the European Commission, the European Parliament and 27 member countries.  While all of the details are not yet clear, we do know that they will institute controls regarding generative AI tools like OpenAI Inc’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.  You may be familiar with both as tools that can create “content on demand.”  In other words, an AI could conceivably have written this very article, though they don’t tend to be very self-referential.  Yet.

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EUROPEAN UNION PROTECTED AI STARTUPS, EXEMPTED LAW ENFORCEMENT

But there is a conflict, for the EU as well as the United States and the United Kingdom.  And that conflict is in how governments address regulating AI, while at the same time protecting their respective AI startups (meaning, companies that develop AI products and tools, not companies run by an AI).  But the EU has likely blazed a path that other countries are likely to follow in some form, having exempted privacy controls from their law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  I guess we’ll just have to see if the FBI ever starts creating AI generated deep-fake porn videos of suspects they are investigating.

I mean, it’s not like Kompromat on any contemporary Western politicians has any bearing, does it….