Not just Meta, 40 EU companies urged EU to postpone roll out of the ai act by two years due to it's unclear nature. This code of practice is voluntary and goes beyond what is in the act itself. EU published it in a way to say that there would be less scrutiny if you voluntarily sign up for this code of practice. Meta would anyway face scrutiny on all ends, so does not seem to a plausible case to sign something voluntary.
One of the key aspects of the act is how a model provider is responsible if the downstream partners misuse it in any way. For open source, it's a very hard requirement[1].
> GPAI model providers need to establish reasonable copyright measures to mitigate the risk that a downstream system or application into which a model is integrated generates copyright-infringing outputs, including through avoiding overfitting of their GPAI model. Where a GPAI model is provided to another entity, providers are encouraged to make the conclusion or validity of the contractual provision of the model dependent upon a promise of that entity to take appropriate measures to avoid the repeated generation of output that is identical or recognisably similar to protected works.
It doesn't seem unreasonable. If you train a model that can reliably reproduce thousands/millions of copyrighted works, you shouldn't be distributibg it. If it were just regular software that had that capability, would it be allowed? Just because it's a fancy Ai model it is ok?
CamperBob2 14 minutes ago [-]
I have a Xerox machine that can reliably reproduce copyrighted works. Is that a problem, too?
Blaming tools for the actions of their users is stupid.
threetonesun 11 minutes ago [-]
If the Xerox machine had all of the copyrighted works in it and you just had to ask it nicely to print them I think you'd say the tool is in the wrong there, not the user.
CamperBob2 10 minutes ago [-]
You'd think wrong.
dmix 2 hours ago [-]
Lovely when they try to regulate a burgeoning market before we have any idea what the market is going to look like in a couple years.
remram 2 hours ago [-]
The whole point of regulating it is to shape what it will look like in a couple of years.
dmix 2 hours ago [-]
Regulators often barely grasp how current markets function and they are supposed to be futurists now too? Government regulatory interests almost always end up lining up with protecting entrenched interests, so it's essentially asking for a slow moving group of the same mega companies. Which is very much what Europes market looks like today. Stasis and shifting to a stagnating middle.
krainboltgreene 2 hours ago [-]
So the solution is to allow the actual entrenched interests to determine the future of things when they also barely grasp how the current markets function and are currently proclaiming to be futurists?
buggyinout 51 minutes ago [-]
They’re demanding collective conversation. You don’t have to be involved if you prefer to be asocial except to post impotent rage online.
Same way the pols aren’t futurists and perfect neither is anyone else. Everyone should sit at the table and discuss this like adults.
You want to go live in the hills alone, go for it, Dick Proenneke. Society is people working collectively.
betaby 1 hours ago [-]
Won't somebody please think of the children?
felipeerias 1 hours ago [-]
The experience with other industries like cars (specially EV) shows that the ability of EU regulators to shape global and home markets is a lot more limited than they like to think.
olalonde 1 hours ago [-]
You're both right, and that's exactly how early regulation often ends up stifling innovation. Trying to shape a market too soon tends to lock in assumptions that later prove wrong.
CamperBob2 13 minutes ago [-]
If the regulators were qualified to work in the industry, then guess what: they'd be working in the industry.
jabjq 59 minutes ago [-]
What will happen, like every time a market is regulated in the EU, is that the market will move on without the EU.
amelius 1 hours ago [-]
We know what the market will look like. Quasi monopoly and basic user rights violated.
1 hours ago [-]
ulfw 39 minutes ago [-]
Regulating it while the cat is out of the bag leads to monopolistic conglomerates like Meta and Google.
Meta shouldn't have been allowed to usurp instagram and whatsapp, Google shouldn't have been allowed to bring Youtube into the fold. Now it's too late to regulate a way out of this.
ekianjo 1 hours ago [-]
they dont want a marlet. They want total control, as usual for control freaks.
t0mas88 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a reasonable guideline to me. Even for open source models, you can add a license term that requires users of the open source model to take "appropriate measures to avoid the repeated generation of output that is identical or recognisably similar to protected works"
This is European law, not US. Reasonable means reasonable and judges here are expected to weigh each side's interests and come to a conclusion. Not just a literal interpretation of the law.
2 hours ago [-]
throwpoaster 29 minutes ago [-]
EU is going to add popups to all the LLMs like they did all the websites. :(
vanderZwan 6 hours ago [-]
I admit that I am biased enough to immediately expect the AI agreement to be exactly what we need right now if this is how Meta reacts to it. Which I know is stupid because I genuinely have no idea what is in it.
If I'd were to guess Meta is going to have a problem with chapter 2 of "AI Code of Practice" because it deals with copyright law, and probably conflicts with their (and others approach) of ripping text out of copyrighted material (is it clear yet if it can be called fair use?)
District judge pretrial ruling on June 25th, I'd be surprised this doesn't get challenged soon in higher courts.
And acquiring the copyrighted materials is still illegal - this is not a blanket protection for all AI training on copyrighted materials
thewebguyd 2 hours ago [-]
Even if it gets challenged successfully (and tbh I hope it does), the damage is already done. Blocking it at this stage just pulls up the ladder behind the behemoths.
Unless the courts are willing to put injunctions on any model that made use of illegally obtained copyrighted material - which would pretty much be all of them.
6 hours ago [-]
voidfunc 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ks2048 1 hours ago [-]
It seems EU governments should be preventing US companies from dominating their countries.
j_maffe 1 hours ago [-]
You really went all out with showing your contempt, huh? I'm glad that you're enjoying the tech companies utterly dominating US citizens in the process
slater 1 hours ago [-]
Who hurt you?
artursapek 2 hours ago [-]
That’s a very reddit bias
jahewson 6 hours ago [-]
There’s a summary of the guidelines here for anyone who is wondering:
It’s certainly onerous. I don’t see how it helps anyone except for big copyright holders, lawyers and bureaucrats.
cm2012 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Atotalnoob 6 hours ago [-]
This all seems fine.
Most of these items should be implemented by major providers…
techjamie 5 hours ago [-]
The problem is this severely harms the ability to release opens weights models, and only leaves the average person with options that aren't good for privacy.
isoprophlex 6 hours ago [-]
I don't care about your overly verbose, blandly written slop. If I wanted a llm summary, I would ask an llm myself.
This really is the 2025 equivalent to posting links to a google result page, imo.
marcellus23 6 hours ago [-]
More verbose than the source text? And who cares about bland writing when you're summarizing a legal text?
rokkamokka 6 hours ago [-]
It is... helpful though. More so than your reply
isoprophlex 6 hours ago [-]
Touché, I'll grant you that.
JonChesterfield 5 hours ago [-]
Nope. This text is embedded in HN and will survive rather better than the prompt or the search result, both of which are non-reproducible. It may bear no relation to reality but at least it won't abruptly disappear.
rockemsockem 6 hours ago [-]
I'm surprised that most of the comments here are siding with Europe blindly?
Am I the only one who assumes by default that European regulation will be heavy-handed and ill conceived?
notyourwork 2 hours ago [-]
What is bad about heavy handed regulation to protect citizens?
felipeerias 39 minutes ago [-]
That it is very likely not going to work as advertised, and might even backfire.
The EU AI regulation establishes complex rules and requirements for models trained above 10^25 FLOPS. Mistral is currently the only European company operating at that scale, and they are also asking for a pause before these rules go into effect.
marginalia_nu 2 hours ago [-]
A good example of how this can end up with negative outcomes is the cookie directive, which is how we ended up with cookie consent popovers on every website that does absolutely nothing to prevent tracking and has only amounted to making lives more frustrating in the EU and abroad.
It was a decade too late and written by people who were incredibly out of touch with the actual problem. The GDPR is a bit better, but it's still a far bigger nuisance for regular European citizens than the companies that still largely unhindered track and profile the same.
plopilop 41 minutes ago [-]
Cookie consent popovers were the deliberate decisions of company to create the worst possible compliance. A much simpler one could have been to stop tracking users especially when it is not their primary business.
Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies" should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the company, not the eu regulation.
zizee 1 hours ago [-]
So because sometimes a regulation misses the mark, governments should not try to regulate?
marginalia_nu 43 minutes ago [-]
Well, pragmatically, I'd say no. We must judge regulations not by the well wishes and intentions behind them but the actual outcomes they have. These regulations affect people, jobs and lives.
The odds of the EU actually hitting a useful mark with these types of regulations, given their technical illiteracy, it's is just astronomically unlikely.
JumpCrisscross 44 minutes ago [-]
I think OP is criticising blindly trusting the regulation hits the mark because Meta is mad about it. Zuckerberg can be a bastard and correctly call out a burdensome law.
RandomThoughts3 48 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
_zoltan_ 38 minutes ago [-]
it does not protect citizens? the EU shoves down a lot of the member state's throats.
hardlianotion 2 hours ago [-]
He also said “ill conceived”
CamperBob2 11 minutes ago [-]
"Even the very wise cannot see all ends." And these people aren't what I'd call "very wise."
Meanwhile, nobody in China gives a flying fuck about regulators in the EU. You probably don't care about what the Chinese are doing now, but believe me, you will if the EU hands the next trillion-Euro market over to them without a fight.
remram 2 hours ago [-]
"blindly"? Only if you assume you are right in your opinion can you arrive at the conclusion that your detractors didn't learn about it.
Since you then admit to "assume by default", are you sure you are not what you complain about?
xandrius 6 hours ago [-]
If I've got to side blindly with any entity it is definitely not going to be Meta. That's all there is.
jabjq 57 minutes ago [-]
I feel the same but about the EU. After all, I have a choice whether to use Meta or not. There is no escaping the EU sort of leaving my current life.
rockemsockem 5 hours ago [-]
I mean, ideally no one would side blindly at all :D
js4ever 2 hours ago [-]
That's the issue with people's from a certain side of politics, they don't vote for something they always side / vote against something or someone ... Blindly. It's like pure hate going over reason. But it's ok they are the 'good' ones so they are always right and don't really need to think
amelius 60 minutes ago [-]
Sometimes people are just too lazy to read an article. If you just gave one argument in favor of Meta, then perhaps that could have started a useful conversation.
bdangubic 56 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps… if a sane person could find anything in favor of one of the most Evil corporations in the history of mankind…
krapp 48 minutes ago [-]
>if a sane person could find anything in favor of one of the most Evil corporations in the history of mankind.
You need some perspective - Meta wouldn't even crack the top 100 in terms of evil:
all of the combined pales in comparison to what meta did and is doing to society at the scale of which they are doing it
OtomotO 2 hours ago [-]
Are you aware of the irony in your post?
9dev 6 hours ago [-]
Maybe the others have put in a little more effort to understand the regulation before blindly criticising it? Similar to the GDPR, a lot of it is just common sense—if you don’t think that "the market" as represented by global mega-corps will just sort it out, that is.
Alupis 6 hours ago [-]
Our friends in the EU have a long history of well-intentioned but misguided policy and regulations, which has led to stunted growth in their tech sector.
Maybe some think that is a good thing - and perhaps it may be - but I feel it's more likely any regulation regarding AI at this point in time is premature, doomed for failure and unintended consequences.
9dev 6 hours ago [-]
Yet at the same time, they also have a long history of very successful policy, such as the USB-C issue, but also the GDPR, which has raised the issue of our right to privacy all over the world.
How long can we let AI go without regulation? Just yesterday, there was a report here on Delta using AI to squeeze higher ticket prices from customers. Next up is insurance companies. How long do you want to watch? Until all accountability is gone for good?
pembrook 2 hours ago [-]
Hard disagree on both GDPR and USBC.
If I had to pick a connector that the world was forced to use forever due to some European technocrat, I would not have picked usb-c.
Hell, the ports on my MacBook are nearly shot just a few years in.
Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and consultants than it has for EU citizens.
kaashif 1 hours ago [-]
The USB-C charging ports on my phones have always collected lint to the point they totally stop working and have to be cleaned out vigorously.
I don't know how this problem is so much worse with USB-C or the physics behind it, but it's a very common issue.
This port could be improved for sure.
Renaud 13 minutes ago [-]
> Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and consultants than it has for EU citizens.
Monetary value, certainly, but that’s considering money as the only desirable value to measure against.
rockemsockem 5 hours ago [-]
I mean, getting USB-C to be usable on everything is like a nice-to-have, I wouldn't call it "very successful policy".
9dev 4 hours ago [-]
It’s just an example. The EU has often, and often successfully, pushed for standardisation to the benefit of end users.
Alupis 4 hours ago [-]
Which... has the consequences of stifling innovation. Regulations/policy is two-way street.
Who's to say USB-C is the end-all-be-all connector? We're happy with it today, but Apple's Lightning connector had merit. What if two new, competing connectors come out in a few year's time?
The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new technically superior connector to enter the market. Fast forward a decade when USB-C is dead, EU will keep it limping along - stifling more innovation along the way.
Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via consensus - but via policy/regulation? These are the same governing bodies that hardly understand technology/internet. Normally standardization is achieved via two (or more) competing standards where one eventually "wins" via adoption.
Well intentioned, but with negative side-effects.
rockemsockem 5 hours ago [-]
I'm specifically referring to several comments that say they have not read the regulation at all, but think it must be good if Meta opposes it.
ars 6 hours ago [-]
> GDPR
You mean that thing (or is that another law?) that forces me to find that "I really don't care in the slightest" button about cookies on every single page?
anonymousab 2 hours ago [-]
That is malicious compliance with the law, and more or less indicative of a failure of enforcement against offenders.
junto 6 hours ago [-]
No, the laws that ensures that private individuals have the power to know what is stored about them, change incorrect data, and have it deleted unless legally necessary to hold it - all in a timely manner and financially penalize companies that do not.
cenamus 6 hours ago [-]
That's not the GDPR.
satellite2 5 hours ago [-]
Well Europe haven't enacted policies actually breaking American monopolies until now.
Europeans are still essentially on Google, Meta and Amazon for most of their browsing experiences. So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important national security aspects.
A position which is essentially reasonable if not too polite.
almatabata 5 hours ago [-]
> So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important national security aspects.
When push comes to shove the US company will always prioritize US interest. If you want to stay under the US umbrella by all means. But honestly it looks very short sighted to me.
You have only one option. Grow alternatives. Fund your own companies. China managed to fund the local market without picking winners. If European countries really care, they need to do the same for tech.
If they don't they will forever stay under the influence of another big brother. It is US today, but it could be China tomorrow.
_zoltan_ 37 minutes ago [-]
The EU sucks at venture capital.
andrepd 6 hours ago [-]
So you're surprised that people are siding with Europe blindly, but you're "assuming by default" that you should side with Meta blindly.
Perhaps it's easier to actually look at the points in contention to form your opinion.
rockemsockem 5 hours ago [-]
I don't remember saying anything about blindly deciding things being a good thing.
lovich 6 hours ago [-]
I’d side with Europe blindly over any corporation.
The European government has at least a passing interest in the well being of human beings while that is not valued by the incentives that corporations live by
rockemsockem 5 hours ago [-]
All corporations that exist everywhere make worse decisions than Europe is a weirdly broad statement to make.
zeptonix 6 hours ago [-]
Everything in this thread even remotely anti-EU-regulation is being extreme downvoted
rockemsockem 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah it's kinda weird.
Feels like I need to go find a tech site full of people who actually like tech instead of hating it.
asats 2 hours ago [-]
Don't know if I'm biased but it seems there has been a slow but consistent and accelerating redditification of hacker news.
trinsic2 20 minutes ago [-]
No we like tech that works for the people/public, not against them. I know its a crazy idea.
blibble 2 hours ago [-]
I like tech
I don't like meta or anything it has done, or stands for
j_maffe 1 hours ago [-]
Tech and techies don't like to be monopolized
OtomotO 2 hours ago [-]
I like tech, but I despise cults
impossiblefork 1 hours ago [-]
The regulations are pretty reasonable though.
vicnov 3 hours ago [-]
It is fascinating.
I assume that the tech world is further to the left, and that interpretation of "left" is very pro-AI regulation.
sorokod 6 hours ago [-]
Presumably it is Meta's growth they have in mind.
Edit: from the linked in post, Meta is concerned about the growth of European companies:
"We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them."
t0mas88 2 hours ago [-]
Sure, but Meta saying "We share concerns raised by these businesses" translates to: It is in our and only our benefit for PR reasons to agree with someone, we don't care who they are, we don't give a fuck, but just this second it sounds great to use them for our lobbying.
Meta has never done and will never do anything in the general public's interest. All they care about is harvesting more data to sell more ads.
isodev 6 hours ago [-]
Of course. Skimming over the AI Code of Practice, there is nothing particularly unexpected or qualifying as “overreach”. Of course, to be compliant, model providers can’t be shady which perhaps conflicts with Meta’s general way of work.
rchaud 5 hours ago [-]
Kaplan's LinkedIn post says absolutely nothing about what is objectionable about the policy. I'm inclined to think "growth-stunting" could mean anything as tame as mandating user opt-in for new features as opposed to the "opt-out" that's popular among US companies.
j_maffe 1 hours ago [-]
It's always the go to excuse against any regulation.
jleyank 44 minutes ago [-]
I hope this isn't coming down to an argument of "AI can't advance if there are rules". Things like copyright, protection of the sources of information, etc.
zeptonix 6 hours ago [-]
Good. As Elon says, the only thing the EU does export is regulation. Same geniuses that make us click 5 cookie pop-ups every webpage
t0mas88 2 hours ago [-]
Elon is an idiot.
If he disagrees with EU values so much, he should just stay out of the EU market. It's a free world, nobody forced him to sell cars in the EU.
cenamus 6 hours ago [-]
They didn't give us that. Mostly non-compliant websites gave us that.
dmix 2 hours ago [-]
The the entire ad industry moved to fingerprinting, mobile ad kits, and 3rd party authentication login systems so it made zero difference even if they did comply. Google and Meta aren't worried about cookies when they have JS on every single website but it burdens every website user.
spongebobstoes 5 hours ago [-]
that's deflecting responsibility. it's important to care about the actual effects of decisions, not hide behind the best case scenario. especially for governments.
in this case, it is clear that the EU policy resulted in cookie banners
saubeidl 2 hours ago [-]
Trump literally started a trade war because the EU exports more to the US than vice versa.
chvid 6 hours ago [-]
Why does meta need to sign anything? I thought the EU made laws that anyone operating in the EU including meta had to comply to.
AIPedant 6 hours ago [-]
It's not a law, it's a voluntary code of conduct given heft by EU endorsement.
hopelite 1 hours ago [-]
“Heft of EU endorsement.” It’s amazing how Europeans have simply acquiesced to an illegitimate EU imitation government simply saying, “We dictate your life now!”.
European aristocrats just decided that you shall now be subjects again and Europeans said ok. It’s kind of astonishing how easy it was, and most Europeans I met almost violently reject that notion in spite of the fact that it’s exactly what happened as they still haven’t even really gotten an understanding for just how much Brussels is stuffing them.
In a legitimate system it would need to be up to each sovereign state to decide something like that, but in contrast to the US, there is absolutely nothing that limits the illegitimate power grab of the EU.
RandomThoughts3 39 minutes ago [-]
> in contrast to the US, there is absolutely nothing that limits the illegitimate power grab of the EU.
I am happy to inform you that the EU actually works according to treaties which basically cover every point of a constitution and has a full set of courts of law ensuring the parliament and the European executive respect said treaties and allowing European citizens to defend their interests in case of overreach.
> European aristocrats just decided
I am happy to inform you that the European Union has a democratically elected parliament voting its laws and that the head of commission is appointed by democratically elected heads of states and commissioners are confirmed by said parliament.
If you still need help with any other basic fact about the European Union don’t hesitate to ask.
FirmwareBurner 6 hours ago [-]
> it's a voluntary code of conduct
So then it's something completely worthless in the globally competitive cutthroat business world, that even the companies who signed won't follow, they just signed it for virtue signaling.
If you want companies to actually follow a rule, you make it a law and you send their CEOs to jail when they break it.
"Voluntary codes of conduct" have less value in the business world than toilet paper. Zuck was just tired of this performative bullshit and said the quiet part out loud.
AIPedant 5 hours ago [-]
No, it's a voluntary code of conduct so AI providers can start implementing changes before the conduct becomes a legal requirement, and so the code itself can be updated in the face of reality before legislators have to finalize anything. The EU does not have foresight into what reasonable laws should look like, they are nervous about unintended consequences, and they do not want to drive good-faith organizations away, they are trying to do this correctly.
This cynical take seems wise and world-weary but it is just plain ignorant, please read the link.
bilekas 2 hours ago [-]
> It aims to improve transparency and safety surrounding the technology
Really it does, especially with some technology run by so few which is changing things so fast..
> Meta says it won’t sign Europe AI agreement, calling it an overreach that will stunt growth
God forbid critical things and impactful tech like this be created with a measured head, instead of this nonsense mantra of "Move fast and break things"
Id really prefer NOT to break at least what semblance of society social media hasn't already broken.
The biggest player in the industry welcomes regulation, in hopes it’ll pull the ladder up behind them that much further. A tale as old as red tape.
MPSFounder 6 hours ago [-]
LMAO. Facebook is not big? Its founder is literally the sleaziest CEO out there. Cambridge Analytica, Myanmar, restrictions on Palestine, etc. Let us not fool ourselves. There are those online who seek to defend a master that could care less about them. Fascinating.
My opinion on this: Europe lags behind in this field, and thus can enact regulations that profit the consumer. We need more of those in the US.
nozzlegear 3 hours ago [-]
> Let us not fool ourselves. There are those online who seek to defend a master that could care less about them. Fascinating.
How could you possibly infer what I said as a defense of Meta rather than an indictment of OpenAI?
Fascinating.
zamadatix 6 hours ago [-]
Meta isn't actually an AI company, as much as they'd like you to think they are now. They don't mind if nobody comes out as the big central leader in the space, they even release the weights for their models.
Ask Meta to sign something about voluntarily restricting ad data or something and you'll get your same result there.
decremental 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bboygravity 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah well OpenAI also committed to being open.
Why does anybody believe ANYthing OpenAI states?!
jahewson 6 hours ago [-]
Sam has been very pro-regulation for a while now. Remember his “please regulate me” world tour?
nkmnz 6 hours ago [-]
OpenAI does direct business with government bodies. Not sure about Meta.
somenameforme 6 hours ago [-]
About 2 weeks ago OpenAI won a $200 million contract with the Defense Department. That's after partnering with Anduril for quote "national security missions." And all that is after the military enlisted OpenAI's "Chief Product Officer" and sent him straight to Lt. Colonel to work in a collaborative role directly with the military.
And that's the sort of stuff that's not classified. There's, with 100% certainty, plenty that is.
justlikereddit 2 hours ago [-]
The more I read of the existing rule sets within the eurozone the less surprised I am that they make additional shit tier acts like this.
What do surprise me is anything at all working with the existing rulesets, Effectively no one have technical competence and the main purpose of legislation seems to add mostly meaningless but parentally formulated complexities in order to justify hiring more bureaucrats.
>How to live in Europe
>1. Have a job that does not need state approval or licensing.
>2. Ignore all laws, they are too verbose and too technically complex to enforce properly anyway.
vicnov 6 hours ago [-]
Just like GDPR, it will tremendously benefit big corporations (even if Meta is resistant) and those who are happy NOT to follow regulations (which is a lot of Chinese startups).
And consumers will bear the brunt.
6 hours ago [-]
paul7986 6 hours ago [-]
The US, China and others are sprinting and thus spiraling towards the majority of society's destitution unless we force these billionaires hands; figure out how we will eat and sustain our economies where one person is now doing a white or blue (Amazon warehouse robots) collar job that ten use to do.
renewiltord 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
edhelas 6 hours ago [-]
Sent from an iPhone probably having USB-C because of the EU.
ars 6 hours ago [-]
Just because they occasionally (and even frequently) do good thing, does not mean that overall their policies don't harm them own economies.
renewiltord 6 hours ago [-]
I charge my phone wirelessly. The presence of a port isn't a positive for me. It's just a hole I could do without. The shape of the hole isn't important.
Besides, I posted from my laptop.
zeptonix 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
5 hours ago [-]
saubeidl 2 hours ago [-]
Please don't use ableist language.
brap 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
elliotec 1 hours ago [-]
Europe is the world‘s second largest economy and has the world‘s highest standard of living. I’m far from a fan of regulation but they’re doing a lot of things right by most measures. Irrelevancy is unlikely in their near future.
lvl155 6 hours ago [-]
I have a strong aversion to Meta and Zuck but EU is pretty tone-deaf. Everything they do reeks of political and anti-American tech undertone.
zeptonix 6 hours ago [-]
They're career regulators
6 hours ago [-]
brainzap 1 hours ago [-]
the Meta that uses advertising tooling for propaganda and elected trump?
Rendered at 00:42:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
One of the key aspects of the act is how a model provider is responsible if the downstream partners misuse it in any way. For open source, it's a very hard requirement[1].
> GPAI model providers need to establish reasonable copyright measures to mitigate the risk that a downstream system or application into which a model is integrated generates copyright-infringing outputs, including through avoiding overfitting of their GPAI model. Where a GPAI model is provided to another entity, providers are encouraged to make the conclusion or validity of the contractual provision of the model dependent upon a promise of that entity to take appropriate measures to avoid the repeated generation of output that is identical or recognisably similar to protected works.
[1] https://www.lw.com/en/insights/2024/11/european-commission-r...
Blaming tools for the actions of their users is stupid.
Same way the pols aren’t futurists and perfect neither is anyone else. Everyone should sit at the table and discuss this like adults.
You want to go live in the hills alone, go for it, Dick Proenneke. Society is people working collectively.
This is European law, not US. Reasonable means reasonable and judges here are expected to weigh each side's interests and come to a conclusion. Not just a literal interpretation of the law.
I did not read it yet, only familiar with the previous AI Act https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/ .
If I'd were to guess Meta is going to have a problem with chapter 2 of "AI Code of Practice" because it deals with copyright law, and probably conflicts with their (and others approach) of ripping text out of copyrighted material (is it clear yet if it can be called fair use?)
Yes.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyrig...
Though the EU has its own courts and laws.
And acquiring the copyrighted materials is still illegal - this is not a blanket protection for all AI training on copyrighted materials
Unless the courts are willing to put injunctions on any model that made use of illegally obtained copyrighted material - which would pretty much be all of them.
https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/introduction-to-code-of...
It’s certainly onerous. I don’t see how it helps anyone except for big copyright holders, lawyers and bureaucrats.
Most of these items should be implemented by major providers…
This really is the 2025 equivalent to posting links to a google result page, imo.
Am I the only one who assumes by default that European regulation will be heavy-handed and ill conceived?
The EU AI regulation establishes complex rules and requirements for models trained above 10^25 FLOPS. Mistral is currently the only European company operating at that scale, and they are also asking for a pause before these rules go into effect.
It was a decade too late and written by people who were incredibly out of touch with the actual problem. The GDPR is a bit better, but it's still a far bigger nuisance for regular European citizens than the companies that still largely unhindered track and profile the same.
Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies" should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the company, not the eu regulation.
The odds of the EU actually hitting a useful mark with these types of regulations, given their technical illiteracy, it's is just astronomically unlikely.
Meanwhile, nobody in China gives a flying fuck about regulators in the EU. You probably don't care about what the Chinese are doing now, but believe me, you will if the EU hands the next trillion-Euro market over to them without a fight.
Since you then admit to "assume by default", are you sure you are not what you complain about?
You need some perspective - Meta wouldn't even crack the top 100 in terms of evil:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abir_Congo_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Controversies_and_crime...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita
Maybe some think that is a good thing - and perhaps it may be - but I feel it's more likely any regulation regarding AI at this point in time is premature, doomed for failure and unintended consequences.
How long can we let AI go without regulation? Just yesterday, there was a report here on Delta using AI to squeeze higher ticket prices from customers. Next up is insurance companies. How long do you want to watch? Until all accountability is gone for good?
If I had to pick a connector that the world was forced to use forever due to some European technocrat, I would not have picked usb-c.
Hell, the ports on my MacBook are nearly shot just a few years in.
Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and consultants than it has for EU citizens.
I don't know how this problem is so much worse with USB-C or the physics behind it, but it's a very common issue.
This port could be improved for sure.
Monetary value, certainly, but that’s considering money as the only desirable value to measure against.
Who's to say USB-C is the end-all-be-all connector? We're happy with it today, but Apple's Lightning connector had merit. What if two new, competing connectors come out in a few year's time?
The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new technically superior connector to enter the market. Fast forward a decade when USB-C is dead, EU will keep it limping along - stifling more innovation along the way.
Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via consensus - but via policy/regulation? These are the same governing bodies that hardly understand technology/internet. Normally standardization is achieved via two (or more) competing standards where one eventually "wins" via adoption.
Well intentioned, but with negative side-effects.
You mean that thing (or is that another law?) that forces me to find that "I really don't care in the slightest" button about cookies on every single page?
Europeans are still essentially on Google, Meta and Amazon for most of their browsing experiences. So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important national security aspects.
A position which is essentially reasonable if not too polite.
When push comes to shove the US company will always prioritize US interest. If you want to stay under the US umbrella by all means. But honestly it looks very short sighted to me.
After seeing this news https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/the-networker..., how can you have any faith that they will play nice?
You have only one option. Grow alternatives. Fund your own companies. China managed to fund the local market without picking winners. If European countries really care, they need to do the same for tech.
If they don't they will forever stay under the influence of another big brother. It is US today, but it could be China tomorrow.
Perhaps it's easier to actually look at the points in contention to form your opinion.
The European government has at least a passing interest in the well being of human beings while that is not valued by the incentives that corporations live by
Feels like I need to go find a tech site full of people who actually like tech instead of hating it.
I don't like meta or anything it has done, or stands for
Edit: from the linked in post, Meta is concerned about the growth of European companies:
"We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them."
Meta has never done and will never do anything in the general public's interest. All they care about is harvesting more data to sell more ads.
If he disagrees with EU values so much, he should just stay out of the EU market. It's a free world, nobody forced him to sell cars in the EU.
in this case, it is clear that the EU policy resulted in cookie banners
European aristocrats just decided that you shall now be subjects again and Europeans said ok. It’s kind of astonishing how easy it was, and most Europeans I met almost violently reject that notion in spite of the fact that it’s exactly what happened as they still haven’t even really gotten an understanding for just how much Brussels is stuffing them.
In a legitimate system it would need to be up to each sovereign state to decide something like that, but in contrast to the US, there is absolutely nothing that limits the illegitimate power grab of the EU.
I am happy to inform you that the EU actually works according to treaties which basically cover every point of a constitution and has a full set of courts of law ensuring the parliament and the European executive respect said treaties and allowing European citizens to defend their interests in case of overreach.
> European aristocrats just decided
I am happy to inform you that the European Union has a democratically elected parliament voting its laws and that the head of commission is appointed by democratically elected heads of states and commissioners are confirmed by said parliament.
If you still need help with any other basic fact about the European Union don’t hesitate to ask.
So then it's something completely worthless in the globally competitive cutthroat business world, that even the companies who signed won't follow, they just signed it for virtue signaling.
If you want companies to actually follow a rule, you make it a law and you send their CEOs to jail when they break it.
"Voluntary codes of conduct" have less value in the business world than toilet paper. Zuck was just tired of this performative bullshit and said the quiet part out loud.
This cynical take seems wise and world-weary but it is just plain ignorant, please read the link.
Really it does, especially with some technology run by so few which is changing things so fast..
> Meta says it won’t sign Europe AI agreement, calling it an overreach that will stunt growth
God forbid critical things and impactful tech like this be created with a measured head, instead of this nonsense mantra of "Move fast and break things"
Id really prefer NOT to break at least what semblance of society social media hasn't already broken.
https://openai.com/global-affairs/eu-code-of-practice/
How could you possibly infer what I said as a defense of Meta rather than an indictment of OpenAI?
Fascinating.
Ask Meta to sign something about voluntarily restricting ad data or something and you'll get your same result there.
Why does anybody believe ANYthing OpenAI states?!
And that's the sort of stuff that's not classified. There's, with 100% certainty, plenty that is.
What do surprise me is anything at all working with the existing rulesets, Effectively no one have technical competence and the main purpose of legislation seems to add mostly meaningless but parentally formulated complexities in order to justify hiring more bureaucrats.
>How to live in Europe >1. Have a job that does not need state approval or licensing. >2. Ignore all laws, they are too verbose and too technically complex to enforce properly anyway.
And consumers will bear the brunt.
Besides, I posted from my laptop.