The future of open source AI seems to be up in the air right now, with the EU potentially seeking to place heavy restrictions on generative AI that would severely hamper or outright ban open source projects.

The EU industry chief Thierry Breton wants generative AI like ChatGPT to be considered "high risk" and thus tightly controlled (including downstream applications), which would make open source versions extremely difficult or even impossible to release: https://www.reuters.com/technology/eus-breton-warns-chatgpt-risks-ai-rules-seek-tackle-concerns-2023-02-03/

Yeah that's why Europe sucks. Hasn't been a competitive place for innovation since the 1800s

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Why can't they just block the EU ip address blocks and put a disclaimer that this is not authorized for download in the EU?

This would be inherently bad, and create great opportunities for China, US, UK and elsewhere.

I'd like to believe they are smarter than this, but then again, I don't.

EU: who needs legs, we'll walk fine on our kneecaps.

If you don't do it, another country/federation of countries will. And they will reap the benefits. Losing the AI race has horrible consequences.

You’re downvoted but it’s true. The most recent major fiasco was GDPR. Boy do I love clicking accept all cookies 16 times a day.

Because in Europe people actually give a crap about making sure progress is not just ”woow awesome, so cool” but also actually benefit populations on the long term.

I swear together with Chat Control proposal, the EU is preparing a 4th Reich like mindset.

EU GDPR laws make sense to me but how does this makes sense? Are they just going to keep banning every new advance in tech. Chatgpt isn’t even that bad or revolutionary.

There is not a positive spin to this. The downstream pipeline is ultimately what makes AI beneficial to the common workforce. Complicating runs the risk of creating another bureaucratic gauntlet that’s all but impossible for the average startup to complete.

Cookies came way before GDPR 🤗

Getting downvoted for stating facts

I mean AI will be able to generate their own unique art styles like humans can and copyright it instantly. Copyright is over once these generative models are doing pretty much everything and reasoning their own unique solution. It is time to start thinking about how to restructure society away from human creator to AI creators. I have no idea how the patent office is going to keep up honestly without an AI doing the approvals. I'm pretty sure patents and property rights are going to no longer be functional concepts in a society where AI is producing everything.

Even politicians jobs are going to end up being done by AIs in the end that are just data driven decision makers with some oversight by human validators.

That’s a very narrow perspective. Not all technological progress is inherently good. It obviously just depends what you do with it. These new tools have the potential to create extremely useful applications but also to destroy many jobs concentrating wealth even more in the hands of a small population very rapidly. This can have profound effects on this generation and is definitely worth thinking about. Think the socioeconomic mess that big tech brought San Francisco but at a global scale. SF was heaven 20 years ago. Now it’s bell on earth.

Yeah that's totally because of all the tech bro salaries and not a massive homeless population and the opioid epidemic /s

The industrial revolution was horrible in the short term, but without it, we would still be serfs with an objectively worse standard of living.

Also, technology is the best shot we have at achieving a post-scarcity society.

>Chat Control proposal

That proposal is terrifying. Obliging providers to search through private correspondence is a surefire slope toward the EU becoming a mass surveillance superstate.

Why do you think there are homeless people in SF? Because concentration of wealth happened so quickly with Big tech moving to the area that local were priced out if their homes.

Oh please. There's a ton of homeless people in SF because the weather is nice and the city gives them a ton of support

No one goes from 'almost able to buy a home in SF' to homeless, you're missing some steps there

Well exactly. The question is can we have progress AND some level of stability for society? Imagine if AI does destroy millions of jobs and these workers cannot adapt instantly. What do you think will happen? Poverty homelessness. Do you think people will just accept their fate for the greater Progress? No, if it reaches a certain critical point, that will create a lot of instability. How do you think these people will vote? Who do you think politicians will pick as scapegoats to capitalize on that anger? I work in AI. There is a lot of good that be done with it, but thinking about the impact on society is necessary.

Yeah. And they just quietly tracked you. Now they track you almost exactly the same way but they make you click “yes”. Much more annoying got almost zero benefit.

>Imagine if AI does destroy millions of jobs and these workers cannot adapt instantly. What do you think will happen?

Those who lost their jobs can be provided with a Universal Basic Income funded by the businesses that made them redundant. That way businesses save on costs while people don't lose a cent. I concede it's very idealistic but it's definitely possible, dare I say even likely should democracy not collapse.

I think it would be more productive to plan ahead in a similar vein to the paragraph above instead of attempting to barricade the march of progress.

Lol are you joking? No one is talking about being able to buy a home. I’m talking about being able to afford a 1 bedroom. Look up the median rent in SF since 2010. It almost doubled until he recently started decreasing in certain area. You don’t think a rent that doubles is going to push some people on the street? Do you live in SF? If so ask someone who has been there for 20 years how the situation has changed over that period.

These are interesting ideas but will obviously never happen without some legislation. There has to be a public debate for society to decide what is ok or not if we’re really on the verge of truly deep changes in the economy.

No, what u/mulokisch is saying is that the cookie disclaimers are unrelated to GDPR.

Oh. My bad. I guess I should read up more on this before commenting.

No it would just push people to move farther from the city center

If you can afford 1000/month when prices go up you move. You don't suddenly become homeless with a salary/career where you were able to live in SF before

I’ve thought about it. I do not believe AI is going anywhere or will stop taking jobs. We could slow it down, but I don’t see it stopping without running the risk of falling behind as a technological country. There are a lot of dying industries, we need ways to keep food on those tables regardless of if they were lost by AI or not. Protections for the worker not sanctions on AI.

This isn't true - GDPR puts much more onerous restrictions on what consent must be gained before personal data is processed. Much of what cookies collect is considered personal data, and so immediately on GDPR's passing, many websites started to change their cookie acceptance boxes to these massive things which take up half the screen and have granular consent check boxes. Another factor which just makes browsing the web increasingly inconvenient for the average user.

Populism is on the rise in Europe.

I think populism in EU reached it’s climax before covid. Now with the energy crisis in EU, people are starting to realize governments suck and they need to start relying a bit more on local corporations

There are a lot of people with absolutely no disposable income. Just having to move is a huge financial stress to them. Aside from the actual cost of moving, you might need to spend more time commuting which adds more cost. A ton of people are very vulnerable financially. Why do you think there are so many homeless people? They’re just lazy? I’m curious where you live? This stuff is really obvious

So all they need to do is support repos that are geo blocked for the EU. Everyone else can move on with their lives. It's the GDPR all over again.

I'm curious how much you've interacts with the homeless? Any soup kitchens or charity events? There's maybe a 1 out of 50 chance you come across some one who's well put together, education, has a job, but is just a few bucks short each months

those aren't the people waiting in line at the shelter

They don’t start like that. It takes time to pile up enough problems on a human for them to become addict or mentally ill

What you think rich people don't suffer from mental illness?

Not every problem can be blamed on someone else, especially if the issue is your own brain

Of course they can. Ok you’re just trolling at this point. Good luck

Just FYI, the CTO of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT is of the opinion that there should be regulation of AI:

Do you think these questions should be left to companies like yours, or should governments get involved in creating regulations?

[CTO of openAI] It’s important for OpenAI and companies like ours to bring this into the public consciousness in a way that’s controlled and responsible. But we’re a small group of people and we need a ton more input in this system and a lot more input that goes beyond the technologies-—definitely regulators and governments and everyone else.”

Time interview

Yeah, I completely agree. There are a few different ideas floating around here, specifically I was referencing the original comment that said it may make open source AI all but impossible to create/maintain in accordance with the EU.

AI can be such a great tool, and it certainly needs regulation. But regulation which would serve to consolidate AI into the hands of the wealthy/powerful would be an absolute travesty.