Facebook notoriously allowed advertisers to check boxes to not show ads to certain demographics. This would result in all sorts of discriminatory practices, lik

Facebook notoriously allowed advertisers to check boxes to not show ads to certain demographics. This would result in all sorts of discriminatory practices, like not showing real estate advertisements to Black people. No AI involved. Just a simple rule based system that breaks old and well-understood laws against discrimination. And you can find many other examples where computers are used to "damage to public rights, health, safety, or may trigger negative environmental effects.", and there is nothing in AI that looks like it deserves exceptional treatment here. Is a human powered election disinformation farm worse than the AI equivalent? I don't see how. It's actions that cause harm that should be made illegal, not the algorithm that might produce such an action. The proposal as it stands forbids "exploit[ing] physical biometric data, emotion, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, religion, and political orientation during inference that may cause discriminative operations", but in the name of security the EU as well as the UK and the US already do all of these things. Are our governments going to cease and desist with their unlawful monitoring after this EU AI act comes into effect? We all know the answer to that. How does this proposed ML law improve society? Why do we need it? How does it protect the public?