Laws requiring “rigid compliance,” according to the executives, would be ineffective given how little is still understood about the dangers and applications of generative AI.
More than 150 business leaders are pleading with the European Union to reconsider its most stringent artificial intelligence (AI) rules, claiming that the impending rules will make it more difficult for European businesses to compete with those abroad, particularly when it comes to the technology behind ChatGPT.
In an open letter to EU leaders, executives from companies as diverse as the French aircraft manufacturer Airbus and the French automaker Renault to the Dutch beer giant Heineken warned that the EU’s ground-breaking legislation may hinder the development of generative AI. Popular AI chatbots like ChatGPT can produce text, images, videos, and audio that resemble human writing thanks to that technology.
According to the letter, “Such rules could result in highly innovative companies moving their activities abroad” and investors withholding funds from European AI research. A significant productivity gap between the two sides of the Atlantic would result.
Laws requiring “rigid compliance,” according to the executives, would be ineffective given how little is still understood about the dangers and applications of generative AI. They pleaded with the EU to update the AI Act to put more emphasis on the risks.
The letter does acknowledge that there is “a clear need to properly train these models and ensure their safe use,” given the growing concerns about how AI will affect all facets of life.
The corporate leaders demanded the creation of a regulatory body made up of professionals that can regularly modify regulations in response to new developments and risks. Additionally, they emphasised the necessity of transatlantic standards.
It is the most recent letter to comment on the potential of artificial intelligence, which has astounded users but also sparked worries about data privacy, copyright infringement, and misinformation. Governments all over the world are rushing to limit technology as a result.
Concerns about additional existential threats to humanity were also raised last month by scientists and leaders in the tech sector, including high-ranking officials at Microsoft and Google.
Among the thousands of influential people who signed that statement were Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist known as the “godfather of AI,” and Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT manufacturer OpenAI.
Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist of Meta and another pioneer in artificial intelligence, was absent from the letter signed by European executives on Friday.
The AI Act is still being finalised by the EU, and it won’t go into effect for another two years.
The executives who signed the letter, according to Dragos Tudorache, a Romanian member of the European Parliament who is co-leading the measure, “have not read the text, but have rather reacted on the stimulus of a few,”
The “only concrete suggestions” in the letter, such as “an industry-led process for defining standards, governance with industry at the table, and a light regulatory regime that asks for transparency,” are already included in the law, he pointed out.