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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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First volley in the AI culture war? The EU’s attempt to regulate open-source AI is counterproductive

The regulation of general-purpose AI (GPAI) is currently being debated by the European Union’s legislative bodies as they work on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). One proposed change from the Council of the EU (the Council) would take the unusual, and harmful, step of regulating open-source GPAI. While intended to enable the safer use of these tools, the proposal would create legal liability for open-source GPAI models, undermining their development. This could further concentrate power over the future of AI in large technology companies and prevent research that is critical to the public’s understanding of AI.

The definition of "GPAI" is vague and unclear, but it may possibly differ from the commonly-understood usage of "AGI" and may include systems like GPT-3 and SD.

I will be very curious to see how much mainstream political traction these issues get in the coming years and what the left/right divide on the issue will look like.

Who cares what the EU thinks? The EU is so far behind China and the US in AI, it will never catch up. The reason they're so far behind is because of this fetish for regulation.

https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1509832349986562048

Consider that the entire EU technology sector is worth about 30% of just one of the biggest American tech companies. That was 9 months ago, so maybe they're up to 50% of Apple by now.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markminevich/2021/12/03/can-europe-dominate-in-innovation-despite-us-big-tech-lead/?sh=7b22ce91d75c

Can Europe dominate in innovation? No.

The less players in the AI game the less impossible it is that humanity will survive.

The more players in the game the more likely we are to have an AI on our side of the equation.