EU Urged To Protect Grassroots AI Research or Risk Losing Out To US (theguardian.com) 16
The EU has been warned that it risks handing control of artificial intelligence to US tech firms if it does not act to protect grassroots research in its forthcoming AI bill. From a report: In an open letter coordinated by the German research group Laion, or Large-scale AI Open Network, the European parliament was told that "one-size-fits-all" rules risked eliminating open research and development. "Rules that require a researcher or developer to monitor or control downstream use could make it impossible to release open-source AI in Europe," which would "entrench large firms" and "hamper efforts to improve transparency, reduce competition, limit academic freedom, and drive investment in AI overseas," the letter says.
It adds: "Europe cannot afford to lose AI sovereignty. Eliminating open-source R&D will leave the European scientific community and economy critically dependent on a handful of foreign and proprietary firms for essential AI infrastructure." The largest AI efforts, by companies such as OpenAI and Google, are heavily controlled by their creators. It is impossible to download the model behind ChatGPT, for instance, and the paid-for access that OpenAI provides to customers comes with a number of restrictions, legal and technical, on how it can be used. By contrast, open-source AI efforts involve creating an AI model and then releasing it for anyone to use, improve or adapt as they see fit.
It adds: "Europe cannot afford to lose AI sovereignty. Eliminating open-source R&D will leave the European scientific community and economy critically dependent on a handful of foreign and proprietary firms for essential AI infrastructure." The largest AI efforts, by companies such as OpenAI and Google, are heavily controlled by their creators. It is impossible to download the model behind ChatGPT, for instance, and the paid-for access that OpenAI provides to customers comes with a number of restrictions, legal and technical, on how it can be used. By contrast, open-source AI efforts involve creating an AI model and then releasing it for anyone to use, improve or adapt as they see fit.
You know it's a working stiff (Score:3)
How powerful modern multinationals are and how few people have any real say in them nationalism is increasingly pointless. I think Beau of the fifth column said it best, nationalism is politics for basic people.
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Right now yeah (Score:2)
I do actually care for other things, but if your house is on fire you're not as worried about your next oil change.
Re: Right now yeah (Score:2)
I'm an America. I watched the Republican party try to end democracy. We came a hair's breath away from a dictatorship. So you'll forgive me if I'm just a little touchy.
No, we didn't. Even if your doomsday fantasy of the capital riot succeeding in delaying the election certification happened, all it would really do is just that: Delay the inevitable. Not only are there about a hundred reasons why this would inevitably fail (among them being they had nothing in the way of popular support or anything remotely close to it) but it doesn't even appear that the rioters themselves were trying to overthrow democracy itself, as their stated demands were something to the effect of a
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I can't really bring myself to care. I'm American but the thing is it really doesn't matter because at the end of the day the people who are going to own this technology are going to be the 1% of the 1% and they're not European or American or Chinese or anything their global.
How powerful modern multinationals are and how few people have any real say in them nationalism is increasingly pointless.
I don't think is true for Chinese corporations. The Chinese government can make and have already made the most powerful corporation leaders in China literally disappear overnight. The laws of China explicitly require Chinese corporations to obey Chinese government directives, at the penalty of disappearing overnight.
Even in the US, many corporations cooperate with the government, not out of fear of "disappearing" but at the fear of impacting profits and stock prices.
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I don't think the Chinese really go after the real 1%. I've seen them take down people in the top 10%, but when it comes to the real 1 percenters they're just as untouchable there as everywhere else.
I don't think this is true. There was plausible doubt until the mysterious case of Jack Ma. Ma dared say something about how the government was treating his business. For that, he disappeared for three months, lost out of billions with this cancellation of an IPO. The skeptic would say that he's lucky to be alive.
The problem with Chinese leadership and especially Xi Jinping is that they distrust and fear any one or any group with power that might challenge the party. That was the problem with the Falun
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The 1% don't just put their money under a mattress, they put it to work. Those billions fund companies that in turn hire lots of people. That's the only way they can keep from losing their wealth. I'm not saying I think the 1% are cool, but it's not as simple as "all the money goes to them."
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I think it's hard for Americans to understand what it's like in Europe. I don't mean to be rude, but for example I see a lot of Americans talking like businesses stealing their personal data, even just collecting every scrap of it with no resource, is not just expected but inevitable. Yet here in Europe we have GDPR, and despite its imperfections it does largely work to prevent that kind of abuse.
The EU will regulate AI similarly, and any multinationals that want access to 500m first world consumers is goin
Hype is ok (Score:3)
Grassroots? Or astroturf? (Score:1)
And how are they going to meaningfully differentiate the two?