As an American, its always so encouraging to see the things that come out of the EU
As an EU citizen, I’m often disappointed how these things are applied. New rules may be fine, but often it takes a really really long time here until the necessary changes take an effect in the real world.
The GDPR is a good example imo. We have it for 5 years now, but even many public authorities still don’t comply with it. So I feel that many things are just written on paper.
Don’t they? It may depend on which MS you live in, but fines for not complying with the GDPR are pretty hefty, and although I agree that at the beginning there was a bit of chaos, things have significantly improved, and things like the right to be forgotten do indeed have a direct impact on our lives!
It seems to get better of late, but slowly. We can get an idea about how GDPR is handled across the EU in the GDPR enforcement tracker or in the GDPR Trap Map. Amongst others, the latter says for example:
Departing from the standard in most procedural laws in Germany, Article 20 of the Bavarian Data Protection Law codifies that a complainant may not get access to the files in a complaints procedure. This means that the data subject is very much limited in effectively challenging wrong arguments by the controller. The provision seems to violate fair procedures rights.
Edit for an addition: There are many sites to check a website’s GDPR compliance, e.g. Fathom’s, and to find trackers and cookies there is also The Markup’s Blacklight. I’m not aware whether these tools are known by everyone already.
One major issue that concerns me about these regulations is whether free and open source AI projects will be left alone, or whether they’ll be liable to jumping through procedural hoops that individuals, or small volunteer teams, can’t possibly deal with. I have seen contradictory statements coming from different parties.
Regulations of this sort always bring the risk of entrenching big, deep-pocketed companies that can just shrug and deal with the rules, while smaller players get locked out. We have seen that happening in some of the previous EU tech regulations.
In the AI space, I think the major risk is not AI helping create disinformation, invading privacy, etc. Frankly, the genie is already out of the bottle on many of these fronts. The major worry, going forward, is AI models becoming monopolized by big companies, with FOSS alternatives being kept in a permanently inferior position by lack of resources plus ill-targeted regulations.
The regulation is generally about the application side – things like “states, don’t have a social score system” or “companies, if you make a CV scanner you better be bloody sure it doesn’t discriminate”. Part of the application side already was regulated, e.g. car autopilots, this is simply a more comprehensive list of iffy and straight-up unconscionable uses.
Generating cat pictures with stable diffusion doesn’t even begin to fall under the regulation.
Well, here’s my worry. From my understanding, the EU wants (say) foundation model builders to certify that their models meet certain criteria. That’s a nice idea in itself, but there’s a risk of this certification process being too burdensome for FOSS developers of foundation models. Worse still, would the FOSS projects end up being legally liable for downstream uses of their models? Don’t forget that, unlike proprietary software with their EULAs taking liability off developers, FOSS places no restrictions on how end users use the software (in fact, any such restrictions generally make it non-FOSS).
A foundation model is not an application. It’s up to the people wanting to run AI in a high-risk scenario to make sure that the models they’re using are up to the task, if they can’t say that about some FOSS model then they can’t use it. And, honestly, would you want some CV or college application scanner involve DeepDanbooru.
The regulation not only puts obligations on users. Providers (which can include FOSS developers?) would have to seek approval for AI systems that touch on certain areas (e.g. vocational training), and providers of generative AI are liable to “design the model to prevent it from generating illegal content” and “publishing summaries of copyrighted data used for training”. The devil is in the details, and I’m not so sanguine about it being FOSS-friendly.
Ok here’s what parlimant passed, ie. its amendments
Quoth:
5e. This Regulation shall not apply to AI components provided under free and open-source licences except to the extent they are placed on the market or put into service by a provider as part of a high-risk AI system or of an AI system that falls under Title II or IV. This exemption shall not apply to foundation models as defined in Art 3.
