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In a sense it's about that, but the people whose jobs are threatened and are protecting themselves here are bureaucrats and politicians, not necessarily who you may have in mind.
AI is a potential tool for a challenger to the ruling elite, and the people who rule the EU know only one way to deal with challengers, and it's to regulate them away. They'll sooner condemn the entire union to a slow fall into irrelevance than compromise on the total power of experts behind desks deciding what ought to happen.
I'd be sad at how much of a joke the old continent has become. But one can only be disappointed so many times.
You think that's a challenge to the ruling elite, rather than tools for them to control us proles even more tightly?
Ask yourself who gets to do "Emotion recognition in the workplace and schools, social scoring" right now. And who would under a new regime of automation.
The same people? I have no reason to think that automation will mean a change in the hands on the levers of power, one reason I'm so suspicious of the push for AI.
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Similarly, I noticed little comment about the ban on facial recognition.
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