Google and the EU agree to set rules for the use of AI because legislation will be slow

European legislative procedures are slow and are very out of step with artificial intelligence that is moving very fast.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
26 May 2023 Friday 05:07
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Google and the EU agree to set rules for the use of AI because legislation will be slow

European legislative procedures are slow and are very out of step with artificial intelligence that is moving very fast. The European Commission and Google have agreed to start applying rules on a voluntary basis on the use of AI to avoid the time gap between the current situation and the likely date of application of the legislation being prepared by the European Parliament, towards the beginning of 2025

The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, met in Brussels on Wednesday with the CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, with the aim of sealing a pact on the use of AI before that there really are applicable rules. " Sundar and I - explained the president - agreed that we cannot afford to wait until the regulation of AI is really applicable, and work together with all developers to deploy already an artificial intelligence pact in a way voluntarily before the legal deadline".

On Tuesday, Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager explained that the European Union and the United States have held talks to step up cooperation on artificial intelligence so that minimum regulatory standards can be established before legislation. enter into force.

The European Parliament approved earlier this month the comprehensive set of measures that will make up the artificial intelligence law, which will include provisions to ban the technology from being applied in high-risk uses such as facial recognition and to make AI model training compliant with copyright law, among other goals.

Breton usually shows firm public positions regarding the big tech companies and repeated the scene after the meeting with the Google leader by publishing a tweet in which he stated: “We hope that technology in Europe respects all our rules on data protection, online security and artificial intelligence”. And he remarked, with a gif (an animated photograph) in which he gestured in front of Pichai, that "Europe is not about arriving and choosing", alluding to the fact that it is a market with rules that the big companies are obliged to respect

Who doesn't seem so keen to voluntarily accept a strict regulatory framework is OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT. Its CEO, Sam Altman, who last week toured some European countries that included Spain, said in London that the project the European Parliament is working with gives him "a lot of doubts". "The details really matter," he pointed out. We will try to comply, but if we cannot do so we will stop operating".

Breton warned him: "The rules are established for the safety and well-being of our citizens, and this cannot be negotiated." The Commissioner said that “Europe has been a pioneer in designing a strong and balanced regulatory framework for AI that addresses risks related to fundamental rights or security, but also enables innovation so that Europe becomes a pioneer in the reliable AI”.