The European Union’s flagship artificial intelligence regulation package, commonly known as the “AI Act,” entered into force on Thursday, August 1st. Eurocrats have celebrated it as the globe’s first comprehensive legal framework around AI and hope it will serve as a regulatory model for the rest of the world, although others have heavily criticised it.
The primary aim of the Act is to classify how artificial intelligence is used into four categories based on its “risk level” to the economy, industry, and society. AI technology used in industries is then regulated according to these categories. The highest-risk ones—including China-inspired social scoring, biometric surveillance, targeted scanning, and other privacy-violating practices—are completely banned in the EU.
First proposed by the European Commission in April 2021 and adopted last December, the legislative process for the AI Act has been plagued by one problem after another, with criticism that EU elites are attempting to regulate the unregulatable and risk driving away AI startups entirely.
While Brussels has praised it as a “launch pad” for European businesses, several leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron have warned that overregulating AI risks giving the U.S. and particularly China an unfair advantage in the global industrial race.
Echoing the remarks made by Macron, Visiting Research Fellow at MCC Brussels Dr. Norman Lewis stated to The European Conservative that the package was “not anything to celebrate” as he explained that Eurocrats were attempting to regulate themselves out of a commercial hole they had created.
Referring to the Act as almost entirely “self-defeating” for Europe, Dr. Lewis explained how the EU was allowing lawyers to set the pace of change for AI and declared the entire bloc is now on the “slow lane” for innovation relative to other parts of the World.
“Referees don’t win matches,” Dr. Lewis declared as he summarized Europe’s increasing role in AI development, saying that the bloc was unlikely to impose the AI Act on the world in a similar fashion as was done with GDPR due to the declining power of its common market to dictate terms.
Depending on their size, companies operating in the EU and producing or using artificial intelligence products have three to six months to comply with the new regulations. Most of them will remain unaffected, however, as 85% of all AI companies fall under the ‘minimal risk’ category and are subject to barely any new regulation.
