Billy Perrigo, reporting for Time: The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has spent the last month touring world capitals where, at talks to sold-out crowds and in meetings with heads of governments, he has repeatedly spoken of the need for global AI regulation. But behind the scenes, OpenAI has lobbied for significant elements of the most comprehensive AI legislation in the world -- the E.U.'s AI Act -- to be watered down in ways that would reduce the regulatory burden on the company, according to documents about OpenAI's engagement with E.U. officials obtained by TIME from the European Commission via freedom of information requests.

In several cases, OpenAI proposed amendments that were later made to the final text of the E.U. law -- which was approved by the European Parliament on June 14, and will now proceed to a final round of negotiations before being finalized as soon as January. In 2022, OpenAI repeatedly argued to European officials that the forthcoming AI Act should not consider its general purpose AI systems -- including GPT-3, the precursor to ChatGPT, and the image generator Dall-E 2 -- to be "high risk," a designation that would subject them to stringent legal requirements including transparency, traceability, and human oversight.

The European Commission will unveil on Tuesday possible measures, such as screening of outbound investments and export controls, to keep prized EU technology from countries such as China and prevent it being put to military use by rivals. From a report: The European Union executive will present its Economic Security Strategy as a "communication" to EU lawmakers and countries, whose leaders are set to discuss relations with China in Brussels next week. While not a formal legislative proposal, the communication will lay out strategies the 27-nation EU should consider as it seeks to "de-risk" from China and avoid sensitive technology leaking out through exports or investments abroad.

The Commission will need to tread carefully because granting of export licences and weighing security interests are national competences that EU governments will want to retain. A Dutch plan that effectively bars Chinese companies from buying the most advanced lithography tools of ASML, which are used to make semiconductors, is a case in point. The Dutch acted alone, but wanted restrictions throughout the EU. EU officials point out there is no clear way to do this.

Intel will invest more than 30 billion euros ($33 billion) in Germany as part of its expansion push in Europe, the U.S. company said on Monday, marking the biggest investment by a foreign company in Europe's top economy. From a report: The deal to build two leading-edge semiconductor facilities in the eastern city of Magdeburg involves 10 billion euros in German subsidies, a person familiar with the matter said. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said he was grateful to the German government and the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where Magdeburg is located, for "fulfilling the vision of a vibrant, sustainable, leading-edge semiconductor industry in Germany and the EU." Under Gelsinger, Intel has been investing billions in building factories across three continents to restore its dominance in chipmaking and better compete with rivals AMD, Nvidia and Samsung.

What's old is new again, at least in the European Union. The European Parliament recently voted in favor of new legislation that would overhaul the entire battery life cycle, from design to end-of-life, which includes important caveats for smartphone users. From a report: Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today with most phones, but that wasn't always the case.

European Union officials have voted in favor of stricter regulations on artificial intelligence, including a ban on AI use in biometric surveillance and a requirement for AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT to disclose when content is generated by AI. Ars Technica reports: On Wednesday, European Union officials voted to implement stricter proposed regulations concerning AI, according to Reuters. The updated draft of the "AI Act" law includes a ban on the use of AI in biometric surveillance and requires systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT to reveal when content has been generated by AI. While the draft is still non-binding, it gives a strong indication of how EU regulators are thinking about AI. The new changes to the European Commission's proposed law -- which have not yet been finalized -- intend to shield EU citizens from potential threats linked to machine learning technology.

The new draft of the AI Act includes a provision that would ban companies from scraping biometric data (such as user photos) from social media for facial recognition training purposes. News of firms like Clearview AI using this practice to create facial recognition systems drew severe criticism from privacy advocates in 2020. However, Reuters reports that this rule might be a source of contention with some EU countries who oppose a blanket ban on AI in biometric surveillance. The new EU draft also imposes disclosure and transparency measures on generative AI. Image synthesis services like Midjourney would be required to disclose AI-generated content to help people identify synthesized images. The bill would also require that generative AI companies provide summaries of copyrighted material scraped and utilized in the training of each system. While the publishing industry backs this proposal, according to The New York Times, tech developers argue against its technical feasibility.

Additionally, creators of generative AI systems would be required to implement safeguards to prevent the generation of illegal content, and companies working on "high-risk applications" must assess their potential impact on fundamental rights and the environment. The current draft of the EU law designates AI systems that could influence voters and elections as "high-risk." It also classifies systems used by social media platforms with over 45 million users under the same category, thus encompassing platforms like Meta and Twitter. [...] Experts say that after considerable debate over the new rules among EU member nations, a final version of the AI Act isn't expected until later this year.

Alphabet's Google may have to sell part of its lucrative adtech business to address concerns about anti-competitive practices, EU regulators said on Wednesday, threatening the company with its harshest regulatory penalty to date. From a report: The European Commission set out its charges in a statement of objections to Google two years after opening an investigation into behaviours such as favouring its own advertising services, which could also lead to a fine of as much as 10% of Google's annual global turnover. The stakes are higher for Google in this latest clash with regulators as it concerns the company's biggest money maker, with the adtech business accounting for 79% of total revenue last year.

Its 2022 advertising revenue, including from search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube adverts, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense, amounted to $224.5 billion. EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Google may have to sell part of its adtech business because a behavioural remedy is unlikely to be effective at stopping the anti-competitive practices.

The European Union took an important step on Wednesday toward passing what would be one of the first major laws to regulate artificial intelligence, a potential model for policymakers around the world as they grapple with how to put guardrails on the rapidly developing technology. From a report: The European Parliament, a main legislative branch of the E.U., passed a draft law known as the A.I. Act, which would put new restrictions on what are seen as the technology's riskiest uses. It would severely curtail uses of facial recognition software, while requiring makers of A.I. systems like the ChatGPT chatbot to disclose more about the data used to create their programs. The vote is one step in a longer process. A final version of the law is not expected to be passed until later this year.

The European Union is further along than the United States and other large Western governments in regulating A.I. The 27-nation bloc has debated the topic for more than two years, and the issue took on new urgency after last year's release of ChatGPT, which intensified concerns about the technology's potential effects on employment and society. Policymakers everywhere from Washington to Beijing are now racing to control an evolving technology that is alarming even some of its earliest creators. In the United States, the White House has released policy ideas that includes rules for testing A.I. systems before they are publicly available and protecting privacy rights. In China, draft rules unveiled in April would require makers of chatbots to adhere to the country's strict censorship rules. Beijing is also taking more control over the ways makers of A.I. systems use data.

Google is set to be hit with a formal antitrust complaint from the European Union that could lead to massive new fines and strike at the heart of the advertising technology that drives most of the US firm's revenue. From a report: The so-called statement of objections, to be announced as soon as Wednesday, will mark another escalation in a long-running saga that's already led to a trio of EU penalties totaling more than $8.6 billion. The new charges will target the core of the Alphabet unit's ad tech business model, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. Google's advertising business is by far its most successful, accounting for about 80% of its annual revenue. In 2022, its ad sales amounted to about $225 billion. The new complaint is the most significant in the current five-year mandate of the European Commission, the EU's antitrust watchdog, one of the people said.

Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to open up their AI models to the U.K. government for research and safety purposes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced at London Tech Week on Monday. From a report: The priority access will be granted in order "to help build better evaluations and help us better understand the opportunities and risks of these systems," Sunak said. The announcement came in a speech that championed the promise of AI to transform areas such as education and healthcare and heralded the U.K.'s potential as an "island of innovation."

"AI is surely one of the greatest opportunities before us," said Sunak. By combining AI models with the power of quantum, "the possibilities are extraordinary," he marvelled. "But we must and we will do it safely," he continued. "I know people are concerned."

The European Commission has approved 8.1 billion euros ($8.7 billion) of state aid for microelectronics and communication technology projects as part of the European Union's drive to be at the cutting edge of technological innovation. From a report: The EU executive said on Thursday that 14 member countries could provide the aid to 68 projects involving companies including Airbus, ASML and Ericsson. The projects have been collectively designated an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), qualifying them for easier EU state aid rules. They follow an earlier batch of IPCEI projects in the same sector approved in 2018.

The projects, which involve a total of 56 companies, include research and development into materials and tools, as well as chip design and manufacturing processes. They target 5G and 6G telecoms technology, along with autonomous driving, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. The first novel products could come to market as early as 2025, while the overall project is expected to be completed by 2032.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has no plans to go public any time soon, Chief Executive Sam Altman said at a conference in Abu Dhabi. "When we develop super intelligence, we are likely to make some decisions that most investors would look at very strangely," Altman said. "I don't want to be sued by ... public market, Wall Street etc, so no, not that interested," he said in response to a question on whether he will take OpenAI public.

OpenAI has so far raised $10 billion from Microsoft (MSFT.O) at a valuation of almost $30 billion as it invests more on building computing capacity. "We have a very strange structure. We have this cap to profit thing," he said. OpenAI started off as a non-profit organization but later created a hybrid "capped-profit" company, that allowed it to raise external funds with a promise that the original non-profit operation still benefits.

Altman is on a whirlwind tour across the world, meeting heads of states of several countries, and was in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday. He plans to travel next to Qatar, India and South Korea. While in Europe he got into controversy for saying OpenAI may leave the region if it becomes too hard to comply with planned laws on AI, inviting criticism from several lawmakers, including EU industry chief Thierry Breton. OpenAI later reversed the stance. "We did not threaten to leave the EU," Altman said on Tuesday. "We expect to be able to comply. There's still more clarity we are waiting for on the EU AI Act, but we are very excited to operate in Europe."

Companies deploying generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Bard with the potential to generate disinformation should label such content as part of their efforts to combat fake news, European Commission deputy head Vera Jourova said on Monday. From a report: Unveiled late last year, Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT has become the fastest-growing consumer application in history and set off a race among tech companies to bring generative AI products to market. Concerns however are mounting about potential abuse of the technology and the possibility that bad actors and even governments may use it to produce far more disinformation than before.

"Signatories who integrate generative AI into their services like Bingchat for Microsoft, Bard for Google should build in necessary safeguards that these services cannot be used by malicious actors to generate disinformation," Jourova told a press conference. "Signatories who have services with a potential to disseminate AI generated disinformation should in turn put in place technology to recognise such content and clearly label this to users," she said. Companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta Platforms that have signed up to the EU Code of Practice to tackle disinformation should report on safeguards put in place to tackle this in July, Jourova said.

Linux Foundation Europe "has announced the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project to help facilitate more performant, commercial-ready software for the RISC-V processor architecture," reports Phoronix.

"Among the companies joining the RISE Project on their governing board are Andes, Google, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Mediatek, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Red Hat, Rivos, Samsung, SiFive, T-Head, and Ventana."

It's top goal is "accelerate the development of open source software for RISC-V," according to the official RISE web site. The project's chair says it "brings together leaders with a shared sense of urgency to accelerate the RISC-V software ecosystem readiness in collaboration with RISC-V International." The CEO of RISC-V International, Calista Redmond, said "We are grateful to the thousands of engineers making upstream contributions and to the organizations coming together now to invest in tools and libraries in support of the RISC-V software ecosystem." RISE Project members will contribute financially and provide engineering talent to address specific software deliverables prioritized by the RISE Technical Steering Committee (TSC). RISE is dedicated to enabling a robust software ecosystem specifically for application processors that includes software development tools, virtualization support, language runtimes, Linux distribution integration, and system firmware, working upstream first with existing open source communities in accordance with open source best practices.

"The RISE Project is dedicated to enabling RISC-V in open source tools and libraries (e.g., LLVM, GCC, etc) to speed implementation and time-to-market," said Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe.
Google's director of engineering on Android said Google was "excited to partner with industry leaders to drive rapid maturity of the RISC-V software ecosystem in support of Android and more."

And the VP of system software at NVIDIA said "NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform — which includes GPUs, DPUs, chiplets, interconnects and software — will support the RISC-V open standard to help drive breakthroughs in data centers, and a wide range of industries, such as automotive, healthcare and robotics."

Microsoft has warned investors about a "non-public" draft decision by Irish regulators against LinkedIn for allegedly dodgy ad data practices, explaining it had set aside some cash to pay off any potential fine. From a report: How much? Oh, a mere $425 million. The software giant said the funds were connected to a 2018 investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) looking into whether LinkedIn's targeted advertising practices violated the the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). At the time of the complaint, the 2016 law had been recently implemented and the watchdog was just settling into its role as EU overlord of judging data practices of the tech giants. Microsoft denies it broke any GDPR rules and said it "intends to defend itself vigorously in this matter."

Biden administration officials are divided over how aggressively new artificial intelligence tools should be regulated -- and their differences are playing out this week in Sweden. From a report: Some White House and Commerce Department officials support the strong measures proposed by the European Union for AI products such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, people involved in the discussions said. Meanwhile, US national security officials and some in the State Department say aggressively regulating this nascent technology will put the nation at a competitive disadvantage, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn't public. This dissonance has left the US without a coherent response during this week's US-EU Trade and Technology Council gathering in Sweden to the EU's plan to subject generative AI to additional rules. The proposal would force developers of artificial intelligence tools to comply with a host of strong regulations, such as requiring them to document any copyrighted material used to train their products and more closely track how that information is used. National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said the Biden administration is working across the government to "advance a cohesive and comprehensive approach to AI-related risks and opportunities."

The European Commission has published its biannual list of foreign countries with problematic copyright policies. One of the highlighted issues is a lack of pirate site blocking, which is seen as an effective enforcement measure, writes TorrentFreak, a news website that tracks piracy news. Interestingly, the EU doesn't mention the United States, which is arguably the most significant country yet to implement an effective site-blocking regime.

The European Union and the United States are set to step up cooperation on artificial intelligence with a view to establishing minimum standards before legislation enters force, the EU's tech chief Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday. From a report: The European Union's AI Act could be the world's first comprehensive legislation governing the technology, with new rules on facial recognition and biometric surveillance, but EU governments and lawmakers still need to agree a common text. Vestager, a vice-president of the European Commission, told a briefing on Tuesday that process might be completed by the end of the year.

"That would still leave one if not two years then to come into effect, which means that we need something to bridge that period of time," she said. Vestager said AI would be one area of focus at the fourth ministerial-level meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Sweden on May 30-31, with discussions on generative AI algorithms that produce new text, visual or sound content, such as ChatGPT. "There is a shared sense of urgency. In order to make the most of this technology, guard rails are needed," she said. "Can we discuss what we can expect companies to do as a minimum before legislation kicks in?"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: The French government unveiled a plan on Monday to accelerate cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions, targeting a reduction of 50 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. Unveiled by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the roadmap includes detailed figures for reductions for individual sectors of the economy, ranging from the transport industry to households. The objectives -- from speeding up the transition to electric cars or switching freight from road to rivers -- are aimed at bringing France's ambitions for slashing carbon pollution into line with the EU's target for 2030.

France has so far cut its emissions by 25 percent compared with 1990 levels, requiring major fresh efforts if it is to hit the new 50-percent target. "We're asking for a bit from the smallest (polluters) and a lot from the biggest," an aide to Borne told reporters, meaning around half of efforts would be for companies, a quarter for households and a quarter for local administrations. "Among other developed countries, the United Kingdom has the most ambitious short-term goals of any major economy, with an objective of 2030 emissions being 68 percent below 1990 levels," notes AFP. "The United States has committed to cut greenhouse gases 50-52 percent by 2030 below 2005 levels, while Germany has set a 65 percent reduction target compared to 1990."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Spain has advocated banning encryption for hundreds of millions of people within the European Union, according to a leaked document obtained by WIRED that reveals strong support among EU member states for proposals to scan private messages for illegal content. The document, a European Council survey of member countries' views on encryption regulation, offered officials' behind-the-scenes opinions on how to craft a highly controversial law to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in Europe. The proposed law would require tech companies to scan their platforms, including users' private messages, to find illegal material. However, the proposal from Ylva Johansson, the EU commissioner in charge of home affairs, has drawn ire from cryptographers, technologists, and privacy advocates for its potential impact on end-to-end encryption.

For years, EU states have debated whether end-to-end encrypted communication platforms, such as WhatsApp and Signal, should be protected as a way for Europeans to exercise a fundamental right to privacy -- or weakened to keep criminals from being able to communicate outside the reach of law enforcement. Experts who reviewed the document at WIRED's request say it provides important insight into which EU countries plan to support a proposal that threatens to reshape encryption and the future of online privacy. Of the 20 EU countries represented in the document leaked to WIRED, the majority said they are in favor of some form of scanning of encrypted messages, with Spain's position emerging as the most extreme. "Ideally, in our view, it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption," Spanish representatives said in the document. The source of the document declined to comment and requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share it.

In its response, Spain said it is "imperative that we have access to the data" and suggests that it should be possible for encrypted communications to be decrypted. Spain's interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has been outspoken about what he considers the threat posted by encryption. When reached for comment about the leaked document, Daniel Campos de Diego, a spokesperson for Spain's Ministry of Interior, says the country's position on this matter is widely known and has been publicly disseminated on several occasions. Edging close to Spain, Poland advocated in the leaked document for mechanisms through which encryption could be lifted by court order and for parents to have the power to decrypt children's communications. Several other countries say they would give law enforcement access to people's encrypted messages and communications. "Cyprus, Hungary, and Spain very clearly see this law as their opportunity to get inside encryption to undermine encrypted communications, and that to me is huge," says Ella Jakubowska, a senior policy advisor at European Digital Rights (EDRI) who reviewed the document. "They are seeing this law is going far beyond what DG home is claiming that it's there for."

Facebook owner Meta was hit by a record $1.3 billion European Union privacy fine and given a deadline to stop shipping users' data to the US after regulators said it failed to protect personal information from the prying eyes of American security services. Bloomberg News: The social network giant's continued data transfers to the US didn't address "the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms" of people whose data was being transfered across the Atlantic, according to a decision by the Irish Data Protection Commission announced on Monday. On top of the fine, which eclipses a $806 million EU privacy penalty previously doled out to Amazon, Meta was given five months to "suspend any future transfer of personal data to the US" and six months to stop "the unlawful processing, including storage, in the US" of transferred personal EU data. A data-transfers ban for Meta was widely expected and once prompted the US firm to threaten a total withdrawal from the EU. But its impact has now been muted by the transition phase given in the decision and the prospect of a new EU-US data flows agreement that could already be operational by the middle of this year.