European business leaders warn against AI regulations limiting innovation
Christopher Hutton
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A group of 150 European business leaders from dozens of the continent’s largest companies have slammed the European Union’s proposed artificial intelligence regulations, alleging it will harm competition and weaken its technological potential.
The leaders sent a letter to the European Commission on Friday, arguing that the growing artificial intelligence industry offers Europe a chance to be a true innovator depending on the regulations at hand. The signatories include executives from Siemens, aircraft builder Airbus, brewer Heineken, and auto manufacturer Renault. The letter was filed weeks after the European Parliament passed AI legislation expected to become law in the coming months.
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“In our assessment, the draft legislation would jeopardize Europe’s competitiveness and technological sovereignty without effectively tackling the challenges we are and will be facing,” the executives wrote.
The companies called upon the EU to establish a group of industry experts to monitor how the law is implemented after its passage to ensure it kept up with the technology.
The AI Act, if approved, would ban the use of AI facial recognition in public spaces and AI predictive police software. It would also set new transparency measures for chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The details of the legislation will still have to be agreed to in a meeting involving representatives of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission.
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ChatGPT developer OpenAI has lobbied for the EU to water down the regulations it intends for AI, claiming it will severely harm its products.
The United States is also quickly moving to implement regulations for artificial intelligence. President Joe Biden met with several Big Tech CEOs on June 23 to discuss the industry’s future alongside India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.