Russia's oil export ban has 'no practical significance'

Moscow's decision to ban oil sales to countries that impose a price cap on Russian fuel "has no practical significance" for Germany, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent decree is not a source of concern for Berlin, Robert Saverin, spokesperson for Germany's Economic Affairs and Climate Action Ministry, said at a news conference in Berlin.

"I don't want to say that it is irrelevant, but it has no practical significance. We have been preparing to replace Russian oil exports since early summer," he said. "Overall, we have been working to ensure the security of supply. It continues to be assured, regardless of whether this decree has been issued or not."

Putin signed a decree on Tuesday prohibiting supplies of oil and petroleum products to countries applying a price cap on Russian fuel. The decree comes into effect on Feb. 1 and will be valid until July 1.

The ban applies to contracts that "expressly or indirectly" contain either the term "price cap" or a mechanism for setting a price limit at any stage of supply from the producer to the end buyer.

Moscow had vowed such a move after the EU and G-7 countries introduced a price cap of $60 per barrel for

Russian oil to dent its oil earnings. The price cap applies to oil shipped by sea and does not affect supplies via pipelines. Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Croatia are temporarily exempted from applying the measure.

From "intelligent" vacuum cleaners and driverless cars to advanced techniques for diagnosing diseases, artificial intelligence has burrowed its way into every arena of modern life.

Its promoters reckon it is revolutionising human experience, but critics stress that the technology risks putting machines in charge of life-changing decisions. Regulators in Europe and North America are worried.

The European Union is likely to pass legislation next year-the AI Actaimed at reining in the age of the algorithm. The United States recently published a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and Canada is also mulling legislation.

Looming large in the debates has been China's use of biometric data, facial recognition and other technology to build a powerful system of control.

Gry Hasselbalch, a Danish academic who advises the EU on the controversial technology, argued that the West was also in danger of creating "totalitarian infrastructures".

"I see that as a huge threat, no matter the benefits," she told AFP.

But before regulators can act, they face the daunting task of defining what AI actually is. Suresh Venkatasubramanian of Brown University, who co-authored the AI Bill of Rights, said trying to define AI was "a mug's game".

Any technology that affects people's rights should be within the scope of the bill, he tweeted. The 27-nation EU is taking the more tortuous route of attempting to define the sprawling field.

Its draft law lists the kinds of approaches defined as AI, and it includes pretty much any computer system that involves automation.

The problem stems from the changing use of the term AI. For decades, it described attempts to create machines that simulated human thinking.

But funding largely dried up for this research-known as symbolic AI-in the early 2000s. The rise of the Silicon Valley titans saw AI reborn as a catch-all label for their number-crunching programs and the algorithms they generated.

This automation allowed them to target users with advertising and content, helping them to make hundreds of billions of dollars.

"AI was a way for them to make more use of this surveillance data and to mystify what was happening," Meredith Whittaker, a former Google worker who co-founded New York University's AI Now Institute, told in a statement.