Why do you doubt that is exactly what is happening? The EU governments are demanding to view all communications by it's citizens AND has given itself the right to use all sorts of AI technology (like facial recognition) on private data (like faces for example). Privacy protection, even for your medical records, only exists against private companies. Which means that the people you want privacy from, your medical insurance, which is part of the government nearly everywhere in Europe, both has access and can do with the data whatever it wants under EU legislation.
Does anyone seriously expect EU legislation will protect people from the obvious: training AI on chat messages and then using violence (ie. police action) just based on online messages?
How about also reviewing the copyright laws in favour of the public? The AI actors consume everything for profit and nobody cares. But if an ordinary Joe does this for personal amusement, he should face consequences.
This whole thing is obviously biased, because of money.
It's really stupid that people imagine that the GDPR would hold back European AI.
Seeing as the Americans firms have in fact rolled out their systems, it's unlikely to be a legal problem withe GDPR. Maybe copyright is a problem.That would have been a solved problem if that regulation requiring people to list their training data had been applied fully.
This won't make any difference for AI and will reduce EU cohesion, as a belief in privacy is a shared European value.
go outside and you will see people share almost nothing in common. It's ridiculous to pretend all people in europe agree on this matter, but nobody outside europe doing it.
It's a tricky balance to strike. I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race, and I do want them to be more competitive in the tech landscape. At the moment, EU really isn't competitive in tech (and neither in tech salaries) and it leads to a certain amount of 'brain drain' as people move abroad.
So while I do understand the need for regulations, they shouldn't regulate themselves into irrelevance. I don't think there's an easy solution to this.
I like the EU, but what's annoying about things like this, or the Chat Control law that keeps getting pushed, is that civil society and privacy advocacy groups always need to stay vigilant and keep mobilizing people. It's an attrition game.
I wonder what harm companies are even claiming. But honestly makes perfect sense that Germany's current conservative government is in favor of it. Giant GDP boosts are always just one deregulation away, hm?
> civil society and privacy advocacy groups always need to stay vigilant and keep mobilizing people. It's an attrition game.
I'm not sure why you are singling out the EU Chat Control, when all the US "tech" sector have been playing this attrition game for 40+ years already...
It is indeed an attrition game, and the dominance of the adtech surveillance capitalism is the proof that we are already on the loosing side.
I'm always boggled by the logic of thinking that somehow having big companies going around doing harmful actions to people is "good for the economy" or "keeps us competitive". If having strict AI regulations means AI companies leave Europe, that's good! I wish we could do the same and get them to leave the US. These big AI companies are bad. We shouldn't want them, we shouldn't try to attract them, we shouldn't provide any conciliations or incentives. The sooner and more completely they're eradicated from any jurisdiction, the better. Forcing that kind of toxic waste out of your country should be perceived as a win.
"Draft changes would create new exceptions for AI companies that would allow them to legally process special categories of data (like a person’s religious or political beliefs, ethnicity or health data) to train and operate their tech."
Fully anonymized health data I can somehow understand, but what kind of AI needs to be trained with "a person's religious or political beliefs [or] ethnicity", anonymized or not?
Ethnicity can correlate with certain genetic or health predispositions - for instance, the U.S. has long recognized that some conditions (like sickle-cell anemia or hypertension) appear more frequently in Black populations. If AI systems were forbidden from even considering such demographic factors, diagnostic accuracy could suffer.
These categories of data are already somewhat special under the GDPR. I think we've committed enough genocide that now they're enshrined into protected data types.
Biggest problem is you need two types economy at once.
You need the big paradigm shifts that come from an innovation economy; for that, capital must flow easily, risk-taking (both companies and individuals) be rewarded not punished, and a stable job is kind of a bad thing (people get too comfortable)..
Meanwhile in more mature sectors, job security (so people can have mortgages and families) and market stability should be fostered and corporate overreach & power be checked.
Advanced economies are a mix of sectors which need almost opposite policy.
No one can call software and AI mature, they are still innovating. We do not even know how they will look in give years. Premature regulation kills this innovation. Harms of AI are not the same as harms from traffic accidents.
I was there during the 2010s and here is what happened:
- I have been at a lot of public debates/consultations in Brussels on the GDPR as early as 2012. I have seen first EU people there screaming at US/BigTech lobby groups trying to influence the debate in their favor.
- When we started to understand what the regulation would look like everybody started to panic about what it would cost to comply in the public and private sector. Everybody started to appoint a Chief Data Office or Chief Data Protection Officer. Consultancy firms were hired everywhere.
- At the same time "The Cloud" was starting to creep up in those organizations, first as what we were calling "shadow IT". But the decisions maker didn't wanted to hear about "The Cloud" or loosing control of their infrastructure.
- After usually a year of study on the GDPR issue the decision makers were told that:
1/ Our infrastructure and software stack will need deep work to comply and it is gonna cost a fortune.
2/ The business is asking for agility and is already using the cloud.
3/ Look Google, AWS and Azure have a "GDPR compliant" certificate from EY (the same firm who is usually hired for compliance study and work).
- So I have seen dozens and dozens of organizations deciding their migration to the cloud between 2016 and 2019. Then of course COVID and homeworking came and it accelerated everything.
So GDPR pushed everybody to hyperscalers ironically, because Big Tech is playing chess and know how decisions are made and how to work the system.
Also I have never seen a big company centering or even using a Hertzner, OVH or Scaleway.
What is probably going on is Big Tech went back to the Commission and explained the new legislation they have to pass.
And my guess is it is not gonna help any EU based AI company stay competitive or get any significant market share.
The EU will give them pennies to compete with OpenAI and Google and tell them that Europeans are smarter than Americans so David should be able to beat Goliath.
Also the EU AI models have to be trained on renewable energy or whatever.
Washington is rotten but Brussels is about the same (or worst).
This new package is about "removing regulation", specifically GDPR.
Which let's be honest has not achieved its intended target. Google/Apple/etc can easily afford to break GDPR and get caught up in fines while as a small business owner it was a huge and complicated liability.
ofc politico will frame this as a negative, it seems their only mission is to make moloch grow.
I see the same type of comments when it comes to any post on EU tech. What I've found throughout my career is that:
1) Maybe we (EU citizens) are just way less interested in hustle culture compared to other regions. We can keep complaining about regulation and the difficulty of incorporating, but these feel like excuses. Estonia and Portugal come to mind as places where incorporating is practical but not a game-changer. Let's face it: we're just not as interested in launching stuff? We have cushy jobs, with lots of benefits, and launching a business is less required to lead a good life (i.e. we have less inequality ti push against).
2) I've started a company in Belgium of all places. Having worked in Germany for a long time: hey German buddies, it's not the difficulty of starting a business. It's much better over there. Also: deregulating the labor market more would place the majority of us at the mercy of companies a la USA. No, thanks.
3) We're not behind on tech because of the GDPR. Many things in this omnibus are just plain stupid. We should stimulate deeper tech, fundamental research, supporting all the open-source developers we have, and perhaps invest in European structural alternatives. Promote AI? Give me a break.
4) I'm a certified GDPR whatever (2 online courses). It's really not that much of a problem. If you know what data you're collecting and why, your Privacy Policy writes itself. Otherwise you use one of the services that does it for you.
5) Do we have a problem with tech salaries more than a generalised issue with rampant inflation? Because I've never had a single colleague or acquaintance move to the US because of a better salary. Not a single one. On the other hand we're in a parenting group that's full of people that came here to start a family due to the benefits we have. Improving things overall would fight any brain drain more than stimulating tech unicorns.
6) Speaking of which… I'd like to find again the study on the economic tissue of countries. It showed that it's SMEs that employ the most people and pay the bulk of the taxes. Good, decent, boring businesses. We could do less with the nonsensical fantasy of the startup unicorn as a paradigm of entrepreneurship. Okay, I'm sore from having my equity stolen at the last gig, but my point stands. Our parents and grandparents just went to business if they had to. Heck, with the current lack of jobs, many of us will do the same. Let's not pretend that we're missing a startup scene. Berlin was a great place for startups and I can't name a single of the places I've worked that is consequential to anything. Maybe Delivery Hero? But not even that one, they barely made a profit at the time.
Honestly, let's stop whining so much and get yet another sector given the neoliberal deregulation treatment. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but posts complaining about EU regulations at this point feel like karma farming.
26 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 93.1 ms ] threadDoes anyone seriously expect EU legislation will protect people from the obvious: training AI on chat messages and then using violence (ie. police action) just based on online messages?
Oh right.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/policing-speech-online-germany-...
This whole thing is obviously biased, because of money.
Seeing as the Americans firms have in fact rolled out their systems, it's unlikely to be a legal problem withe GDPR. Maybe copyright is a problem.That would have been a solved problem if that regulation requiring people to list their training data had been applied fully.
This won't make any difference for AI and will reduce EU cohesion, as a belief in privacy is a shared European value.
go outside and you will see people share almost nothing in common. It's ridiculous to pretend all people in europe agree on this matter, but nobody outside europe doing it.
So while I do understand the need for regulations, they shouldn't regulate themselves into irrelevance. I don't think there's an easy solution to this.
I wonder what harm companies are even claiming. But honestly makes perfect sense that Germany's current conservative government is in favor of it. Giant GDP boosts are always just one deregulation away, hm?
I'm not sure why you are singling out the EU Chat Control, when all the US "tech" sector have been playing this attrition game for 40+ years already...
It is indeed an attrition game, and the dominance of the adtech surveillance capitalism is the proof that we are already on the loosing side.
Fully anonymized health data I can somehow understand, but what kind of AI needs to be trained with "a person's religious or political beliefs [or] ethnicity", anonymized or not?
It's a category thing. There is personal data and then there is sensitive personal data, which is the enumerated list you quoted.
Snarky non-answer reply is of course -- the kind of ШІ that makes autistic roman salutes and accelerates from 0 to 1933.
Propaganda AI. The EU openly declared that it will create a ministry of truth. Officially called 'fighting disinformation' of course.
Like nobody requested that encrypted chats stop being encrypted or that X becomes a censorship target of EU comissars
With chat control yes, that was totally evil. But I consider GDPR and DSA/DMA forces of good.
The idea that there's no mandate for these things is not true.
You need the big paradigm shifts that come from an innovation economy; for that, capital must flow easily, risk-taking (both companies and individuals) be rewarded not punished, and a stable job is kind of a bad thing (people get too comfortable)..
Meanwhile in more mature sectors, job security (so people can have mortgages and families) and market stability should be fostered and corporate overreach & power be checked.
Advanced economies are a mix of sectors which need almost opposite policy.
- I have been at a lot of public debates/consultations in Brussels on the GDPR as early as 2012. I have seen first EU people there screaming at US/BigTech lobby groups trying to influence the debate in their favor.
- When we started to understand what the regulation would look like everybody started to panic about what it would cost to comply in the public and private sector. Everybody started to appoint a Chief Data Office or Chief Data Protection Officer. Consultancy firms were hired everywhere.
- At the same time "The Cloud" was starting to creep up in those organizations, first as what we were calling "shadow IT". But the decisions maker didn't wanted to hear about "The Cloud" or loosing control of their infrastructure.
- After usually a year of study on the GDPR issue the decision makers were told that:
- So I have seen dozens and dozens of organizations deciding their migration to the cloud between 2016 and 2019. Then of course COVID and homeworking came and it accelerated everything.So GDPR pushed everybody to hyperscalers ironically, because Big Tech is playing chess and know how decisions are made and how to work the system.
Also I have never seen a big company centering or even using a Hertzner, OVH or Scaleway.
What is probably going on is Big Tech went back to the Commission and explained the new legislation they have to pass.
And my guess is it is not gonna help any EU based AI company stay competitive or get any significant market share.
The EU will give them pennies to compete with OpenAI and Google and tell them that Europeans are smarter than Americans so David should be able to beat Goliath. Also the EU AI models have to be trained on renewable energy or whatever.
Washington is rotten but Brussels is about the same (or worst).
Which let's be honest has not achieved its intended target. Google/Apple/etc can easily afford to break GDPR and get caught up in fines while as a small business owner it was a huge and complicated liability.
ofc politico will frame this as a negative, it seems their only mission is to make moloch grow.
Brussels knifes privacy to feed the AI boom
That's inflammatory, but the current OP is inaccurate.
1) Maybe we (EU citizens) are just way less interested in hustle culture compared to other regions. We can keep complaining about regulation and the difficulty of incorporating, but these feel like excuses. Estonia and Portugal come to mind as places where incorporating is practical but not a game-changer. Let's face it: we're just not as interested in launching stuff? We have cushy jobs, with lots of benefits, and launching a business is less required to lead a good life (i.e. we have less inequality ti push against).
2) I've started a company in Belgium of all places. Having worked in Germany for a long time: hey German buddies, it's not the difficulty of starting a business. It's much better over there. Also: deregulating the labor market more would place the majority of us at the mercy of companies a la USA. No, thanks.
3) We're not behind on tech because of the GDPR. Many things in this omnibus are just plain stupid. We should stimulate deeper tech, fundamental research, supporting all the open-source developers we have, and perhaps invest in European structural alternatives. Promote AI? Give me a break.
4) I'm a certified GDPR whatever (2 online courses). It's really not that much of a problem. If you know what data you're collecting and why, your Privacy Policy writes itself. Otherwise you use one of the services that does it for you.
5) Do we have a problem with tech salaries more than a generalised issue with rampant inflation? Because I've never had a single colleague or acquaintance move to the US because of a better salary. Not a single one. On the other hand we're in a parenting group that's full of people that came here to start a family due to the benefits we have. Improving things overall would fight any brain drain more than stimulating tech unicorns.
6) Speaking of which… I'd like to find again the study on the economic tissue of countries. It showed that it's SMEs that employ the most people and pay the bulk of the taxes. Good, decent, boring businesses. We could do less with the nonsensical fantasy of the startup unicorn as a paradigm of entrepreneurship. Okay, I'm sore from having my equity stolen at the last gig, but my point stands. Our parents and grandparents just went to business if they had to. Heck, with the current lack of jobs, many of us will do the same. Let's not pretend that we're missing a startup scene. Berlin was a great place for startups and I can't name a single of the places I've worked that is consequential to anything. Maybe Delivery Hero? But not even that one, they barely made a profit at the time.
Honestly, let's stop whining so much and get yet another sector given the neoliberal deregulation treatment. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but posts complaining about EU regulations at this point feel like karma farming.