These regulations may end up creating a trap for European companies.
Essentially, the goal is to establish a series of thresholds that result in significantly more complex and onerous compliance requirements, for example when a model is trained past a certain scale.
Burgeoning EU companies would be reluctant to cross any one of those thresholds and have to deal with sharply increased regulatory risks.
On the other hand, large corporations in the US or China are currently benefiting from a Darwinian ecosystem at home that allows them to evolve their frontier models at breakneck speed.
Those non-EU companies will then be able to enter the EU market with far more polished AI-based products and far deeper pockets to face any regulations.
Haha, huge, HUGE L-take. Go to any library or coffeeshop, and you'll see most students on their laptops are on ChatGPT. Do you think they won't immediately figure out how to use a VPN to move to the "better" models from the US or China if the EU regulations cripple the ones available in the EU?
EU's preemptive war on AI will be like the RIAA's war on music piracy. EU consumers will get their digital stuff one way or another, only EU's domestic products will just fall behind by not competing to create a equally good product that the consumers want.
>I think they don't even know the term "model" (in AI context), let alone which one's the best. They only know ChatGPT.
They don't know how torrents work either, but they always find a way to pirate movies to avoid Netflix's shitty policies. Necessity is the mother of invention.
>However I don't think many will make use of that.
You underestimate the drive kids/young adults have trying to maximize their grades/output while doing the bare minimum to have more time for themselves.
>Additionally, AI companies could quickly get in trouble if they accept payments from EU credit cards.
Well, if the EU keep this up, that might not be an issue long term in the future, when without top of the line AI and choked by regulations and with the costs of caring for an ageing demographics sucking up all the economic output, the EU economy falls further and further into irrelevancy.
Well, if there's not much difference why bother. If there are copyright restrictions on things people care about Europeans are perfectly capable of bypassing restrictions, like watching the ending of Game of Thrones etc.
5 years ago my parents in Russia didn’t know word VPN. Now they know that witeguard is better than openvpn. Reason: they want to use instagram and youtube (both are blocked).
Chatgpt is more valuable than instagram. I believe people will find the way.
It's always the same argument, and it is true. The US retained an edge over the rest of the world through deregulating tech.
My issue with this is that it doesn't look like America's laissez-faire stance on this issues helped Americans much. Internet companies have gotten absolutely humongous and gave rise to a new class of techno-oligarchs that are now funding anti-democracy campaigns.
I feel like getting slightly less performant models is a fair price to pay for increased scrutiny over these powerful private actors.
The problem is that misaligned AI will eventually affect everyone worldwide. Even if us Americans cause the problem, it won't stay an American problem.
If Europe wants leverage, the best plan is to tell ASML to turn off the supply of chips.
Europe is digging a hole of a combination of suffocating regulation and dependance on foreign players. It's so dumb, but Europeans are so used to it they can't see the problem.
Essentially, the goal is to establish a series of thresholds that result in significantly more complex and onerous compliance requirements, for example when a model is trained past a certain scale.
Burgeoning EU companies would be reluctant to cross any one of those thresholds and have to deal with sharply increased regulatory risks.
On the other hand, large corporations in the US or China are currently benefiting from a Darwinian ecosystem at home that allows them to evolve their frontier models at breakneck speed.
Those non-EU companies will then be able to enter the EU market with far more polished AI-based products and far deeper pockets to face any regulations.