The honeymoon phase for AI is over; we’re all done being wowed by what it can do. Now, it’s time for lawmakers to tell it what it can’t do. Several governmental bodies all over the world are scrambling to develop laws and regulations to keep AI in check and keep it from disrupting the workforce (and, ya know, wiping out humanity or something). At the moment, the EU is struggling to agree on laws to govern AI.
Right now, AI companies are still enjoying the free reign they have, so they’re able to scrape data at will and develop their AI without limitations. We’re all wondering if we can trust profit-driven companies like Google and Microsoft to truly develop safe AI. This is why so many governmental entities are trying to draw a line in the sand that these companies can’t cross.
The EU is doing this, and it’s already had three trilogues (basically large meetings between the EU parliament and the states to finalize laws) on the subject.
However, the EU is having trouble getting laws together for AI
According to four people close to the matter (via Reuters), it’s possible that these meetings could continue into next year. Three trilogues have already been held, and a fourth one is happening on Tuesday. It’s unlikely that there will be some sort of agreement during this meeting, so a fifth one is scheduled to happen in early December.
The issue with this is that governmental processes take time, and this whole situation is no different. With the fifth trilogue planned to happen in December, this whole process could spill into early 2024. Not only that but the June elections could delay the legislation even further. We’re looking at several months before we have anything written in ink.
Spain currently holds the presidency in the EU, and it has proposed some ideas to expedite this process. One thing proposed was a “tiered approach” which might target AI models with more than 45 million users.
Right now, the main chatbots under the EU’s radar are ChatGPT and Google Bard. These are two bots with massive userbases and a massive amount of data powering them. Let’s just hope that the EU can reach an agreement sooner rather than later. There’s no telling what could happen in the next couple of months.
2023-10-24 15:04:41