EU vs. AI

00:00
Speaker 1
AI this, AI that, AI is changing the way we learn. No wonder Chat GPT has been called the end of high school English, the end of the college essay, and the return of the handwritten in class essay. It's changing the way we work.

00:17
Speaker 2
I have a friend who's building an app on his own. Normally, he would have hired a developer. Instead, he's just using Chat GPT because it can code and it can correct its own code all.

00:25
Speaker 1
Yeah, pretty soon it'll be changing the way we do just about everything.

00:29
Speaker 2
Alexa order trash liners.

00:31
Speaker 1
And yet there have been just about zero rules governing artificial intelligence until now.

00:39
Speaker 3
I think we have made history.

00:41
Speaker 1
Today, Europe's gone and done some regulating on our latest technology, as Europe often does. People are using words like landmark and first of its kind. You might even hear use those words on this episode of today, explained.

00:59
Speaker 4
Hey there, beautiful people.

01:01
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
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02:09
Speaker 2
You're listening today.

02:11
Speaker 1
Explain. Jess Weatherbed is a news writer at the Verge, and for a while now, she's been covering the EU's new AI act. And was this process easy breezy, fancy free? Or was it complicated?

02:29
Speaker 4
Yeah, complicated is probably one way of putting it. We've got kind of a two year timeline, roughly, to work with here. They proposed the AI act back in 2021.

02:40
Speaker 5
Artificial intelligence must serve people, and therefore artificial intelligence must always comply with people's rights.

02:49
Speaker 4
AI, as we know at that point, was vastly different to what it is now. They were working with systems that were designed to do a very specific purpose. So it was a little bit easier to try and categorize how risky those systems are going to be for people living within the EU. There's been a hell of a lot of interruptions and a lot of disruption caused by various things. But the biggest one, I would say, in the last two years was systems like chat.

03:11
Speaker 2
GPT is a software that has gone viral this week. It's a chat bot that uses natural language processing to generate responses to user inputs.

03:21
Speaker 4
Now, suddenly, rather than these AI systems that are only built to do a specific job, you've got these foundation models or large language models that are literally designed to do pretty much anything. You can put their mind to it. They can generate images, they can write text, they can apparently write code. And it presented so many new options that weren't anything that could be covered by the original scope of the AI act.

03:43
Speaker 3
We have seen a change, we have seen a change in the mood in the discourse, and now there is no big deal, no big contraposition on the need to find a sensible regulation for generative AI.

04:03
Speaker 4
It had to be reworked several times over. It's one of the largest contributors to the delays in actually getting it approved. Between that and discussions around how it can be applied to things like national security and law enforcement were the two most highly contested points of what's been argued and debated about over the last year.

04:26
Speaker 1
Okay, so the EU has been talking about regulating AI for a good while, but things got real this December.

04:33
Speaker 4
It kind of came to a head around ten days ago. That was when the. The provisional agreements were made, but prior to that, it was about 36 hours of just solid debate.

04:43
Speaker 1
I think that you have all heard and probably agree that AI is too important not to regulate, and it's too important to badly regulate. A good regulation that we all agree on as soon as possible must be a common objective.

05:01
Speaker 4
At one point, they had been in Brussels having one prolonged conversation, trying to iron out the differences and compromises for about 22 hours at least. So you've got a lot of tired, cranky, potentially sleep deprived lawmakers, policymakers, all crammed into a building trying to finalize a set of blueprint AI regulations that are apparently going to be set the example for every other global regulators, and yet they're in a room cramming like college students before a finals exam.

05:31
Speaker 1
But they got it done. It was worth it because they got it done.

05:34
Speaker 4
Yeah, well, they've got it provisionally. Agreed. So this is kind of the first big step to it being completely done.

05:41
Speaker 1
What did they get done? What are these landmark EU regulations on artificial intelligence?

05:48
Speaker 4
We don't know for sure. Oh, the full text isn't going to be available for several weeks. What they tend to do with these is that they will make compromises based on principles. Now they actually have to go away and jazz it up with the legal language that they want to have things adhered to at that point.

06:04
Speaker 3
And we built a risk based approach that identifies high risk AI use cases that needs to be more regulated and needs to be checked on data used to train it.

06:18
Speaker 4
A lot of it seems to be following the same kind of framework that they proposed years ago, which is that they wanted a risk based tiered system that you could categorize different AI systems with. And by taking certain attributes of what they could apply to, you can then go, great. These are low risk. These ones are high risk, which means that they're going to have to be subjected to all these investigations. They're going to have to tell us what they're doing with their data, how much power they use. It just makes it a little bit easier, rather than having a complete free for all or wild west of not even having a distinction for what AI is, which was where they were in 2021.

06:53
Speaker 3
And we also identified uses that we think should be outrightly banned, like the use of biometric identification in public spaces on real time to avoid, by banning it, the risk of mass surveillance. And we also banned predictive policing, social scoring, emotion recognition for students and workers, because we think that in these cases there is no added value and more risks than benefits.

07:26
Speaker 1
I remember Joe Biden sort of announcing his oversight of AI, and all the AI guys came to the White House and everyone was smiling and it felt very performative. Were the AI guys happy about this regulation or were they less into it?

07:43
Speaker 4
Initially? I haven't seen anything in terms of response off the finalized provisional agreement that we've just seen. But early on when they were talking about blanketing all of these systems as high risk because they just didn't know what to do with them, they were very unhappy, to say the least. So companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, these companies all lobbied the EU to basically come forward and go, but we're fine to self regulate. We don't need to be held accountable. And it's not fair that you're going to assume that our products are automatically bad just because they could be bad.

08:15
Speaker 1
We've seen what happens to countries that try to over regulate tech. I don't think that's what we want here.

08:21
Speaker 4
It wasn't only the AI companies that were a little bit unhappy about it. There was also some members of the EU that were not particularly happy about it because they're hoping that homegrown AI companies can have the room to innovate. So we know that France, Germany and Italy at some point back in November, turned around and went, how about we just don't regulate general AI at all and let them do their own thing? And I think, quite understandably, a lot of the rest of the EU turned around and went, no. Yeah. And then that led on to a couple of extra weeks of highly contested arguments about what they should be regulating, what should be involved in this agreement, two years after it was first proposed.

08:58
Speaker 1
Well, speaking of delays, when do these rules go into effect? I mean, we don't even have them officially yet. When do they take effect?

09:07
Speaker 4
So this is going to be a multi step process. When the law comes into effect within six months. Anything that's outright prohibited, which includes, for example, a lot of this, was in terms of kind of like national security and biometric surveillance that will come into effect within six months to try and get that enforced as quickly as possible, the obligations that are going to be impacted against general AI. So the stuff that's probably going to impact companies like OpenAI, that should come into effect twelve months after the law itself has taken effect. So that stuff is probably going to take into effect in 2025. Anything that's going to impact these big companies. And then the remainder of all the rest of the gubbins, everything else that they need to tidy up, should be in place by 2026.

09:49
Speaker 4
So the full force of this law could take another two years, like two and a half years potentially, to actually do anything, are we going to have.

09:57
Speaker 1
A different set of problems by that.

09:59
Speaker 4
Point, when you consider how much stuff changed between them proposing this law in 2021, and then just OpenAI kind of appearing on the scene within a year later going, hey, have you heard of generative AI that can do anything? We could be looking at a completely different landscape by then. And unfortunately, I'm not in the business of being like a seer or a prophet or anything, so I can't turn around and say, absolutely, we're going to have a different environment to deal with. They've done their best with this system, that they've got the tiered system to make sure that anything that's introduced might be able to just be categorized within it already.

10:34
Speaker 4
They know that if it's going to be an AI model that's turning around, saying that it can do several different jobs, it's going to be classified as a general AI, and it's going to beholden to a certain level of restrictions. Same as if they look at it and go, well, yeah, this is a customer facing chat bot that's going to go here. They've made it so that anything that's developed within the future hypothetically can be slotted into the existing rules. But as far as I'm aware, that was also the plan in 2021, and look what happened. I don't think it's the ironclad set of rules that anyone was hoping for at this point in time, especially when a lot of the stuff that needs to be regulated, people are actually saying needs to kind of be discussed prompt, like now.

11:12
Speaker 4
And it's taken, I would say, probably an embarrassingly long time for a bunch of politicians and AI providers to come together and make an agreement on what should constitute a safe development going forward. It's very much like the dog meme of just sitting there with a room on fire going, this is fine, I'm.

11:31
Speaker 5
Okay with the events that are unfolding currently.

11:34
Speaker 4
It's good that they're in. There's still a lot of work to be done and there's still some changes that could be made. But for now at least, it's a concrete agreement. There's no more in squabbling about how we're going to work the tiered systems or what's going to be included in there. The framework is in place and they can at least progress now rather than the stagnation that we've had for the past two years.

12:01
Speaker 1
Jess Weatherbed at theverge readher@theververge.com. When we're back on today, explained why Europe is always first with this stuff. First.

12:16
Speaker 2
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13:13
Speaker 1
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14:14
Speaker 4
Hey there, beautiful people.

14:15
Speaker 1
I'm journalist and author Trayville Anderson and I'm hosting the official Rustin podcast. We're diving into the man, the moment, and the movement at the center of the Netflix film where the stakes were so severe, people were getting killed for registering people to vote. He was a pioneer in the sense that he really was a true radical. You are absolutely going to want to listen, I promise you that. Subscribe now wherever you get slay worthy podcasts today, explained Sean Ramesburgham, joined by Columbia University professor Anu Bradford. She's the author of a book called the Brussels Effect, how the European Union rules the world.

15:07
Speaker 5
So the Brussels effect refers to European Union's unilateral ability to regulate the global marketplace. So the EU is one of the largest and wealthiest consumer markets in the world, and there are very few global companies that can afford not to trade in the EU. So as the price for accessing the european market, they need to follow european regulations. But often it is in their business interest to basically extend those regulations across their global production or their global conduct because they want to avoid the cost of complying with multiple different regulatory regimes.

15:43
Speaker 1
Is the EU just always trying to be first, or is there something special going on here? How are they able to move relatively, comparatively quickly on artificial intelligence?

15:54
Speaker 5
I don't think the EU necessarily wants to be first, but it just has the ability to regulate. If you compare to the United States, there is not similar polarization in the european legislature as there is in Congress. So the political divides are not preventing legislation from moving forward. There's also much less lobbying, or the lobbying is less effective in the EU. So the US legislative process is very much shaped by tech companies that have influence over lawmaking. And the EU just does not operate quite the same way. So the civil society also has access to legislators and often then offsets or balances the message that the lawmakers are hearing from the tech companies.

16:42
Speaker 1
So basically what you're saying is, in Europe, you all have functional government.

16:48
Speaker 5
That is one very good way to put it. There is still a functioning government in the EU. There's a legislator that is capable of passing legislation and that makes a big difference.

17:01
Speaker 1
So can you give us a sense of the history here, how much the EU has managed to accomplish in terms of tech regulation because of this functional government ideology on technology?

17:14
Speaker 5
So I would go back to early 1990s. That's when the US really stepped back from regulation.

17:27
Speaker 1
Because the Internet has such explosive potential for prosperity, it should be a global free trade zone.

17:34
Speaker 5
Up until then, the US had often been setting the rules that had global impact. But then the US really adopted this market driven dogma that was very anti regulation. So the US took the lead in promoting this deregulation agenda.

17:52
Speaker 1
It should be a place where government makes every effort, first, as the vice president said, not to stand in the way.

18:00
Speaker 5
And the EU stepped in and filled the vacuum because at that very point, the EU was ramping up its own efforts to integrate the common european market. And that meant it needed to harmonize regulations so that we removed the barriers from within the member states for trading within the EU. So the EU started proactively building a regulatory state, not for the purpose of ruling the world, but for the purpose of making Europe an integrated, strong trading area.

18:31
Speaker 1
We will strengthen the impact of this community through the ongoing implementation of common foreign and security policies.

18:38
Speaker 5
So then the EU started focusing its regulatory efforts on digital economy.

18:44
Speaker 1
The European Union has approved rules to force big technology firms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter to remove illegal content.

18:51
Speaker 2
The European Union has hit tech giant meta with a record breaking fine of over a billion dollars for defying privacy rules.

18:59
Speaker 5
And the gap between what the EU was producing and what the US was failing to do in the regulatory space just became larger and larger. But initially it was really the US's decision to say that, look, we trust the markets and the EU making philosophically a very different rule. And I think the inadvertent effect, the unintended consequence was that the US basically feeded this whole governance space to the EU.

19:30
Speaker 1
And what has it accomplished? Give us some of the greatest hits.

19:34
Speaker 5
Well, I would say the GDPR is by far the most famous hit.

19:38
Speaker 1
The European Union's general data protection regulation, known to friends as GDPR, goes into effect tomorrow.

19:46
Speaker 5
So that was enacted in 2016, and that is a very significant regulation in shaping the entire global data privacy conversation and legislative frameworks. Then also antitrust. So the Europeans are very concerned about the abuse of market power by dominant tech companies.

20:05
Speaker 1
You have to recognize that you have powers beyond anyone else, and with that comes a responsibility.

20:11
Speaker 5
So there have been four antitrust lawsuits against Google that have been successfully concluded in the EU and that have resulted in around $10 billion in fines. And then there is the content moderation space. So the Europeans are very concerned about disinformation. They are very concerned about hate speech and the toxic environment surrounding Internet users when they are using the platforms.

20:39
Speaker 1
And we need to say to some of these service providers, you have a responsibility for the way you do business to make sure that people feel as comfortable when they are online as well as when they are offline.

20:50
Speaker 5
So the Europeans have moved to limit hate speech and limit disinformation, even though they remain committed to freedom of expression. There is just a sense that important commitment to free speech is balanced against some other fundamental rights, including a.

21:08
Speaker 1
Right to dignity and a hard pivot away from dignity to your phone chargers may be the most tangible of all these Brussels effects. There are USB A chargers. There are USB B chargers. There are USB C chargers. There are micro USB chargers. There are mini USB chargers. There are light.

21:30
Speaker 5
The EU also regulates consumer electronics. So there's an environmental concern surrounding consumer waste and then another concern, just the consumer convenience. If you like the idea that we do not want the consumers to have to buy different cords for all the different devices and all the different jurisdictions where they are using them. So the EU standardized the common charger, which then led Apple to also switch its own charging port and extend that change not just in Europe, but also outside of the EU.

22:08
Speaker 1
The word from Apple basically is like, the Europeans made us do it, but it's time. And we think people aren't going to freak out now in a case like that with the Apple USB C charger situation, where literally everyone around the world who has this device will have their tech now changed because of this EU regulation, why does it make more sense for a tech company like Apple to change this charging port for the whole world instead of just for the european market. Tell us how the Brussels effect makes sense for a business.

22:47
Speaker 5
So often for these tech companies, it's just a matter of efficiency and a cost calculus. So it is not efficient to run multiple different production lines. There are scale economies in uniform production, so they don't want to be producing different variations for different markets. And same applies for companies like Meta's Facebook. They pride themselves of having one global Facebook. So if you and me are having a conversation, and I'm in Europe and you are in the United States, they don't want there to be a different speech rules that apply to the conversation whereby I would not be seeing a part of the conversation that you are able to see, because there are different content moderation rules that would make it really difficult to have effective cross border conversations.

23:37
Speaker 5
But I would say, sean, that the most common reason is just simply, it is just too expensive to have many varieties of the same product.

23:47
Speaker 1
I mean, I want to bring this back to AI. Has Europe met its match in artificial intelligence? We were talking earlier in the show about how these new regulation proposals may not go into effect until 2026, at least fully. That's a very long time away, and this technology might look dramatically different by then. Our guest did mention that these regulations might have room to be augmented to fit whatever AI looks like in 2026. But this does feel like a new day for tech regulation.

24:21
Speaker 5
So I completely agree, and I concede that regulating in this space is extremely difficult. This is a fast moving technology, and nobody knows where we are a few years from now. But I don't think it is a reason not to intervene and regulate. There are simply too many serious harms that we need to guard individuals and societies against. So a responsible government does step in, even knowing that regulation may need to be revisited. But you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are also tremendous costs in waiting, and we do not want to just watch for all those costs to be materialized. The goal here is not to crush the development of AI, because I think it really is important to encourage that.

25:13
Speaker 5
I think the goal is to understand that alongside those opportunities, there are nontrivial harms, and the governments need to take those seriously. And trusting the tech companies to self govern, it is irresponsible, because these companies are so focused on pursuing the profits that they just cannot afford to spend enough time on thinking about what happens to democracy, what happens to individual rights, and that's not even their expertise. And that's why I take comfort that there seems to be global momentum growing that the governments are now increasingly seeing that, look, we need to regulate this space. And now they have a template. Now they have an example that the governments can step in, and when they can step in, how do they do it?

26:07
Speaker 5
Well, they can look at the EU's AI act, and I think that is a very powerful example for the rest of the world.

26:21
Speaker 1
Anu Bradford, Columbia University she's the author of the Brussels Effect, how the European Union rules the world. But even more recently, and also pertinent to our conversation, digital empires the global battle to regulate technology. Our show today was produced by Amanda Llewellyn. It was edited by Matthew Collete, fact checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Patrick Boyd. Today explained.

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Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
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