EU’s AI rules face critical moment
LONDON — Hailed as a world first, European Union artificial intelligence rules are facing a make-or-break moment as negotiators try to hammer out the final details this week — talks complicated by the sudden rise of generative artificial intelligence that produces human-like work.
First suggested in 2019, the EU’s AI Act was expected to be the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence regulations, further cementing the 27-nation bloc’s position as a global trendsetter when it comes to reining in the tech industry.
But the process has been bogged down by a last-minute battle over how to govern systems that underpin general purpose artificial intelligence services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot. Big tech companies are lobbying against what they see as overregulation that stifles innovation, while European lawmakers want added safeguards for the cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems those companies are developing.
Meanwhile, the United States, U.K., China and global coalitions like the Group of 7 major democracies have joined the race to draw up guardrails for the rapidly developing technology, underscored by warnings from researchers and rights groups of the existential dangers that generative artificial intelligence poses to humanity as well as the risks to everyday life.
“Rather than the AI Act becoming the global gold standard for AI regulation, there’s a small chance but growing chance that it won’t be agreed before the European Parliament elections” next year, said Nick Reiners, a tech policy analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk advisory firm.
He said “there’s simply so much to nail down” at what officials are hoping is a final round of talks Wednesday. Even if they work late into the night as expected, they might have to scramble to finish in the new year, Reiners said.
When the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, unveiled the draft in 2021, it barely mentioned general purpose artificial intelligence systems like chatbots. The proposal to classify artificial intelligence systems by four levels of risk — from minimal to unacceptable — was essentially intended as product safety legislation.
Brussels wanted to test and certify the information used by algorithms powering artificial intelligence, much like consumer safety checks on cosmetics, cars and toys.
That changed with the boom in generative artificial intelligence, which sparked wonder by composing music, creating images and writing essays resembling human work. It also stoked fears that the technology could be used to start cyberattacks or create new bioweapons.
The risks led EU lawmakers to beef up the AI Act by extending it to foundation models. Also known as large language models, these systems are trained on vast troves of written works and images scraped off the internet.
Foundation models give generative artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT the ability to create something new, unlike traditional artificial intelligence, which processes data and completes tasks using predetermined rules.
Chaos last month at Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which built one of the most famous foundation models, GPT-4, reinforced for some European leaders the dangers of allowing a few dominant artificial intelligence companies to police themselves.
While Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman was fired and swiftly rehired, some board members with deep reservations about the safety risks posed by artificial intelligence left, signaling that artificial intelligence corporate governance could fall prey to boardroom dynamics.
“At least things are now clear” that companies like OpenAI defend their businesses and not the public interest, European Commissioner Thierry Breton told an artificial intelligence conference in France days after the tumult.
Resistance to government rules for these artificial intelligence systems came from an unlikely place: France, Germany and Italy. The EU’s three largest economies pushed back with a position paper advocating for self-regulation.
The change of heart was seen as a move to help homegrown generative artificial intelligence players such as French startup Mistral AI and Germany’s Aleph Alpha.
Behind it “is a determination not to let U.S. companies dominate the artificial intelligence ecosystem like they have in previous waves of technologies such as cloud [computing], e-commerce and social media,” Reiners said.
A group of influential computer scientists published an open letter warning that weakening the AI Act this way would be “a historic failure.” Executives at Mistral, meanwhile, squabbled online with a researcher from an Elon Musk-backed nonprofit that aims to prevent “existential risk” from artificial intelligence.