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EU rules ask tech giants to publicly track how, when AI models go off the rails
- thefz 1y ago> The AI industry participated in drafting the AI Act, but some companies have recently urged the EU to delay enforcement of the law, warning that the EU may risk hampering AI innovation by placing heavy restrictions on companies. Where YOU live you can have all the unbridled capitalism as you want - be a product for tech bros and help make some executive a billionaire - I don't care! Where I live, I want this shit regulated. So, good stuff, EU.
- clovoak 1y ago> Where YOU live you can have all the unbridled capitalism as you want A bit rich when all the companies mentioned are across the pond?
- thefz 1y agoSo what, they should slurp up all the data they can?
- alganet 1y agoSure. However, this was _never_ about money and _always_ about good honest work.
- ackfoobar 1y agoIf it weren't for the cookie banners (I blame the EU, but I'm open to corrections), I'd agree with you.
- no_wizard 1y agoI disagree, cookie banners are not the bane people make them out to be. The alternative is much worse, which is having zero say in tracking cookies. I'll take a banner on every single website to have more control of that. I really don't see the issue. If you really find them annoying, use ublock with a proper cookie banner filter or something like that
- afiori 1y agoIIUC the infamous cookie banner law only to inform the user of cookies/client tracking, it did not require to ask for consent. that came with GDPR and other privacy laws
- nemomarx 1y agoMost cookie banners don't seem to actually meet the requirements of the law, at least to my reading, which does say denying them has to be as easy as accepting. And the law doesn't even suggest a popup or banner, just that you can't add cookies without receiving permission - fully opt in would work for it
- miohtama 1y agoYou can make as many as laws you want, but if no one cares you are only harming those businesses who care.
- bigyabai 1y agoIf this is your biggest complaint then I think you lack perspective.
- ackfoobar 1y agoCookie banners themselves is not a huge problem, but it is a good example of EU regulations being prone to stupid unintended consequences.
- bossyTeacher 1y agoBlame the companies not the EU. Most companies don't need to track you and thus don't need the cookie banner.
- thefz 1y agoThat's the effect of malicious compliance rather than the law itself
- shagie 1y agohttps://gdpr.eu https://gdpr.eu maliciously complies with itself? Note that's a company page that the EU pays to do it.. the EU government page is even worse. https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/rules-business-and-organisations_en https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...
- TeMPOraL 1y agoTL;DR: the cookie banners and consent forms are designed to make you blame the EU. You don't need a cookie banner if you aren't doing anything shady. Using cookies (or other such mechanisms) does not require information or consent popups when they're necessary to make the product/service work for technical reason - the canonical example being session cookies. The corollary here being, you only need consent popups if you're doing something shady but not strictly illegal. They're not meant to be annoying - they're there because it's illegal to do shady shit without the user agreeing to it, and "agreeing" in the EU means "informed consent". So you have to inform, and then get consent. It's all pretty reasonable. But of course, people doing shady shit really don't want the users to understand it and risk them not consenting - and they especially hate having to ask in the first place. The industry settled on a "malicious compliance" approach to GDPR - show popups that, as much as they can get away with it, maximize the chance of people consenting to make the popup go away, make the "informed" part as opaque as possible, and generally make this thing super annoying - and then tell people it's all EU's fault, hoping enough Europeans will buy it and the public pressure will make EU undo GDPR.
- shagie 1y ago>TL;DR: the cookie banners and consent forms are designed to make you blame the EU. https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en https://gdpr.eu https://gdpr.eu If cookie banners were not designed to be required... why does the EU pages themselves use them?
- TeMPOraL 1y agoNot ideal, but those banners are unobtrusive, and link to clear information on what they collect and why, and which things need your consent: https://gdpr.eu/privacy-policy/ https://gdpr.eu/privacy-policy/ https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en Though again, not ideal IMO; based on skimming those policies, I think they could've set it up so consent popup only shows in specific situations that trigger the need for it. That, and I don't get why they use (a minimal build of) Google Analytics, and let that data fly over to the US (which they explicitly acknowledge). That's just lazy.
- resource_waste 1y agoUh... you know that there are offline models that are already downloadable? LLM regulation is too late, models are already at chatGPT3.5 or 4 levels, which is enough to do basically anything. You are confusing intent for ground reality. Its like saying 'we banned drugs' but we still have a drug problem.
- nickslaughter02 1y agoDon't be surprised when all the innovation happens in the US or China and EU will be left behind like always.
- thefz 1y agoEU leads in medical innovation, civil engineering, mechanical engineering.
- saubeidl 1y agoWhen has it ever been left behind? The WWW was invented in Europe. All modern chips are bottle necked by European EUV.
- nimish 1y agoWhy would anyone develop AI models in the EU? You have a lot of compliance requirements and there's fewer enterprises that will pay for them
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoI'm guessing that due to regulations, the only AIs you'll be allowed to use in the EU will be the EU developed ones that fulfill the requirements, so there's a captive market right there for local companies. Granted, they'll probably end up performing worse than US or Chinese ones operating without restrictions and being uncompetitive on the global free market, but when did EU leaders ever think about long term consequences? Certainly not when they tied their economy to Russian gas and banned nuclear, certainly not when they prioritized toxic diesel engines over gasoline, certainly not when they demilitarized or when they ceded tech innovation to US and China, but for once this will be the right call, I can feel it, this will bring EU to the forefront of tech supremacy.
- roguecoder 1y agoWhy would you assume they would end up performing worse? I have yet to see a company that prioritized quality over profits, unless forced to by regulation.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>Why would you assume they would end up performing worse? Extrapolating from historical outcomes using logic and critical thinking. No company/start-up in history ever, became successful by having to start with more regulations than their competition.
- saubeidl 1y agoVestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer only achieved global dominance due to Danish energy regulations in the 80s. That's just one random example that came to mind.
- alganet 1y agoEU two or three steps ahead. AI companies are moving to user interface innovations to try to grab more unwilling training individuals. These new UI innovations will feel like shit if they try to force adoption, full of warnings and disclaimers. Reminiscent of the cookie law, which many people hate, but they hate because companies insist in having cookies (if you don't track, you don't need the cookie popup). Privacy, safety and reliability debates are back into dark patterns awareness. This is a territory tech companies were trying very desperately to get out of. I think it's also brilliant in the way it answers the black box paradigm. "Oh, we cannot explain it, it's a black box". "Then explain how you made it, otherwise it's a no go". Ultimately, this sets the discourse straight regarding what AI skepticism is all about. This is not about being anti-commerce, it's about being good commercial entities.
- randcraw 1y agoI haven't read the directive/law, but the EU should also invite EVERYONE to submit well documented and reproducible examples of AI/LLM failures. It's only through public exposure that improvement will be assured. The AI vendors will NEVER fix any system flaws that can be ignored or hidden. Only a public database can force these into the open.
- nradov 1y agoWhat is a failure?
- pasc1878 1y agoWhen an AI gives you a link that it made up. (This is easily verifiable) Telling lies basically.
- lp0_on_fire 1y agoIn AI-speak, a "hallucination".
- chha 1y agoThe AI Act classifies systems depending on their capabilities and their intended use, and the risk that they pose on the people using or being exposed to them. If a tool ends up being classified as a high-risk AI system or as a model with systemic risk there are strict requirements in terms of reporting incidents. For certain types of incidents it is as little as two days, for others upwards of 15 days.
- CoastalCoder 1y agoI wish the headline used a word such as "force", "tell", or "require". To me, "ask" connotes that compliance is voluntary. Which in some circumstances strikes me as an intentional, rhetorical lie.
- baggy_trough 1y agoYes, this use of 'ask' is statist propaganda.
- DrillShopper 1y agoAnti-statist not so smug when the AI finally reaches their pro-state
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoPress release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1787 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
- rustc 1y agoHow would this apply to open-weight models? The creators of the models cannot know who is using the model and for what.
- miohtama 1y agoYou ban open weight models and the problem is solved
- Retric 1y agoUsers of the model could be legally required to take part in the tracking.
- Lariscus 1y agoJust the same? If you publish a model that doesn't follow these rules nobody in the EU could use that model in their business. You could publish unlicensed source code as well and nobody could really use it for anything business related either.
- rustc 1y ago> If you publish a model that doesn't follow these rules The rules require tracking outputs, which open-weight models cannot do. So I'm wondering if open-weight models have separate rules or this effectively bans releasing such models.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoThat is confusing since closed-weight models (the models, not the applications using the models) also can't track outputs. It would be weird if the rules applied to the model and not the application because then it literally only applies to open-weight models since the closed-weight models are, by definition, never released to the public. Trying to understand the rules but it doesn't seem to make a clear distinction between these things. I assume that they are intending the applications that use the models, not the models.
- Lariscus 1y ago
- xeonmc 1y agoMeanwhile at xAI: "Let's have Wolfenstein in real life".
- Workaccount2 1y agoThe EU continuing their strategy of "If we can't have homegrown tech to tax, we'll just fine the foreign tech people use instead".
- general1726 1y agoIf strategy of foreigners is to make money from citizens of EU then strategy of EU should logically be to make money out of foreigners.
- pjmlp 1y agoWe are fine not having neoliberal capitalism, plus we can follow the example of other countries and erect the big European wall, for that matter.
- xigoi 1y agoHow dare the EU prioritize the rights of its citizens over the rights of evil foreign megacorporations!
- saubeidl 1y agoPeople say the EU is behind at AI. The EU is the only one thinking about AI long-term, everyone else is just seeing what happens.