Of the 51 global start ups worth $10 billion or more, only one is based in the EU, 32 are based in America.
This seems to be primarily because of tighter EU regulation on tech companies, which includes the AI sector. Earlier this year the EU quickly passed the first AI legislation in the world in response to the launch of chapGPT.
The legislation targets all forms of AI and imposes several requirements on firms working to develop it. For example, it sets an upper limit on the size and power of AI models, limits which have already been exceeded, meaning there are going to be no AI start ups in Europe going forwards.
This seems a bit bizarre, I mean can you imagine a law having been established in the 1990s which placed upper limits on the processing speed of computer chips...?
Just placing a blanket upper restriction on AI models is pointless, I mean now all that's going to happen is we are going to be consumers of AI products, but get none of the economic benefits of producing AI products.
Well I say 'we', I mean Britain hasn't adopted the same EU legislation yet, we are under pressure to do so, but hopefully the government will see sense and adopt a lighter touch approach.
Nuanced, but not nuanced enough....?
Maybe it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the way some people use that tech...?!?
If you're going to legislate for AI, I think it needs to be more selective.... maybe legislate against the use of AI in certain forms, such as with deep fakes, or when used to unfairly influence elections, or when Elon Musk thinks it's good.
The legislation is tiered, in that AI applications deemed to be high risk are banned altogether (one example given is toys which encourage violent behaviour, I mean fair enough!), with lighter legislation for lower risk applications...
But pretty much any firm working with AI has to jump through all sorts of compliance and risk assessment hoops now, which is going to be very off-putting for smaller businesses. Although maybe that's moot, as the upper hardware limit is probably already enough to stop innovation starting in the EU anyways...?!?
And these aren't going to affect the tech giants already working on AI, they aren't based in the EU anyways.
Final thoughts...
I just don't get what the EU thinks they are protecting us from, it's not as if other countries are going to follow suit, and AI has this habit of crossing borders, whether governments want it to or not!
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