In the last few months, the narrative that regulation of AI, and specifically the EU AI Act (AIA) is detrimental to innovation in the EU, has gained a lot of traction both on social and traditional media. Many people claim the AIA stops EU in its tracks of AI development, that companies will decide to do business elsewhere, because of the more lax regulatory landscape, especially in the US and China.
Reasons why this is speculative and exaggerated:
1. AIA is not that severe, will apply to a very narrow set of cases, for specific high risk areas, most SMEs and even many large businesses will be impacted in a very limited way.
2. Even the strict obligations are based on good and sound business practices. The AIA (1) is aimed at large corporations abusing their power, (2) aims at protecting the rights of citizens and will be interpreted in that light, meaning that if a company has robust security practices, good internal governance and quality products, it has no reason to be afraid of the regulation, and (3) establishes in the form of statutory obligations standard business practices, most of which companies are anyway either implementing or having in place already.
3. The AIA is not perfect, but that does not mean it is bad. We aim at perfection in everything we do as society, but should never be trapped in a perfectionist circle - even the best products malfunction and make errors, this is normal. Lack of perfection has not stopped any business before, it should not stop regulation as well. Also, guidelines and codes of practice are being drafted which will clarify compliance and ensure high level of legal clarity.
4. There are many exceptions to the rules, and both companies and regulators have enough time to adjust to the regulation. There is no willingness from the EU to stop the business, my opinion is that the intent is to stop the Big Tech players to do whatever they want and protect the citizens from market abuse. There are a lot of companies, which are very profitable, in full compliance and deliver high quality products to the market, and are not negatively affected by any EU regulations. Also, an example for an overstated effect on the business is the GDPR: its negative effects on the business are greatly exaggerated, its positive effects - undermined. Again, if a company has efficient and robust internal processes, compliance is not that difficult to achieve.
5. Regulation exists and is being implemented both in the US and in China. In fact, legislation is mostly on state level in the US, which is going to impact the regulatory landscape there more than the EU, because companies may need to abide by different rules in different states. This is often the case for data privacy regulation as well. China, on the other hand, still falls short from the EU in terms of social justice, equality, general standard of living and many other similar metrics, so any business analysis from there must take that into consideration.
Comentarios