When it comes to new technologies, “disruptions” and “revolutions” are usually not far away. These terms should actually describe events of the century. But now they’re being used so often by marketing departments and tech apologists that we run the risk of overlooking the real upheavals for all the ad babble.
Rarely has technology advanced so rapidly. And never in history has an offer on the Internet grown as quickly as the bot called ChatGPT, which already had 100 million users after two months.
The technology behind it is nothing less than the infrastructure of the future digital world. The algorithms will become the basis for a completely new generation of internet services and business models. The development is as important as the invention of the Internet once was, said Bill Gates recently in the Handelsblatt.
More importantly, the revolution we are witnessing is disrupting the balance of power in the tech world. The US start-up OpenAI is suddenly challenging Google with its ChatGPT program, because people can communicate much more naturally with the program than with Google’s search mask.
A global competition for this power has now flared up. In the USA, billions flow into young companies, and in China – where AI was declared the most important future technology as early as 2015 – even provincial governments are working on talking machines. In Europe, on the other hand, instead of a revolution, a new law is created.
>> Read here: ChatGPT maker OpenAI presents improved version GPT-4
While elsewhere masses of young AI companies are working on new ideas, the EU is discussing the so-called AI Act, which will come into force in summer 2024. This law not only endangers the entire AI ecosystem – it further shifts power in the technology world towards the international tech corporations. Because Brussels is discussing a set of rules that tries to avoid all conceivable risks.
It should organize all conceivable fields of application of AI at the same time. This creates a bureaucratic monster that wants to oblige young companies to sometimes erroneous documentation. And so that no line of code remains unchecked, some fields will even be double-regulated in the future.
In the health sector, for example: on the one hand about the new AI Act and at the same time on the rules that already exist for digital health services. Have you lost track? You are not alone there. What is being created here is above all an economic stimulus package for consultants and lawyers.
Farewell from Europe
No wonder the first start-ups are planning to pull their AI development out of Europe, according to a survey by the AppliedAI initiative, and for once that’s not lobbying. It is the cry for help from an industry that fears for its existence in Europe. Because of the confusing regulatory situation, investors in European AI companies are already becoming more cautious.
Just a reminder: Microsoft is investing more than ten billion dollars in the AI superstar OpenAI in the USA. This is the competition that European start-ups face.
Of course, new technologies need rules. Especially when they decide about life and death of people. But the one super law is not a good idea when it comes to such fundamentally different things as digital medical services, autonomous mobility and security technologies.
The group relies on the AI card.
(Photo: IAN C. BATES/The New York Times//Redux/laif)
More important than new rules would be an answer to the question of how globally relevant AI companies can emerge in Europe. They need massive amounts of computing power, specialists, networks to other companies – and a lot of money. The EU could help with all of this. Anyone who sees more opportunities in the world builds bridges. But those who see risks above all build walls. The EU decided to build the wall.
Incidentally, what can go wrong with such sets of rules can be seen in the General Data Protection Regulation, the bulky EU law intended to ensure privacy in digital life. In fact, however, it drives smaller companies in particular with enormous bureaucratic small-small insane.
Corporations like Google and Facebook don’t have a problem with that: They employ entire departments that take care of all this. A huge competitive disadvantage remains for medium-sized companies and start-ups. The law, which was supposed to protect citizens’ data, has thus weakened the rather small-scale European digital economy, while the big US tech companies have become stronger.
This history threatens to repeat itself with the AI Act. All the new services are coming to Europe anyway, no matter what the regulation looks like. The only question is whether at least some of them were also developed here. We still have a fair chance, but not for much longer.
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