Meta says it won’t sign Europe AI agreement, calling it an overreach

There’s a summary of the guidelines here for anyone who is wondering:

https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/introduction-to-code-of...

It’s certainly onerous. I don’t see how it helps anyone except for big copyright holders, lawyers and bureaucrats.

This all seems fine.

Most of these items should be implemented by major providers…

I don't care about your overly verbose, blandly written slop. If I wanted a llm summary, I would ask an llm myself.

This really is the 2025 equivalent to posting links to a google result page, imo.

It is... helpful though. More so than your reply

Touché, I'll grant you that.

More verbose than the source text? And who cares about bland writing when you're summarizing a legal text?

Nope. This text is embedded in HN and will survive rather better than the prompt or the search result, both of which are non-reproducible. It may bear no relation to reality but at least it won't abruptly disappear.

The problem is this severely harms the ability to release opens weights models, and only leaves the average person with options that aren't good for privacy.

These regulations may end up creating a trap for European companies.

Essentially, the goal is to establish a series of thresholds that result in significantly more complex and onerous compliance requirements, for example when a model is trained past a certain scale.

Burgeoning EU companies would be reluctant to cross any one of those thresholds and have to deal with sharply increased regulatory risks.

On the other hand, large corporations in the US or China are currently benefiting from a Darwinian ecosystem at home that allows them to evolve their frontier models at breakneck speed.

Those non-EU companies will then be able to enter the EU market with far more polished AI-based products and far deeper pockets to face any regulations.

Unless, ya know, it gets marked as Flagged/Dead.

And then they'll get fined a few billion anyway to cover the gap for no European tech to tax.

> It’s certainly onerous.

What exactly is onerous about it?

It's basically micromanaging an industry that European countries have not been able to cultivate themselves. It's legislation for legislation's sake. If you had a naive hope that Mario Draghi's gloomy report on the EU's competitiveness would pave the way for a political breakthrough in the EU - one is tempted to say something along the lines of communist China's market reforms in the 70s - then you have to conclude that the EU is continuing in exactly the same direction. I have actually lost faith in the EU.

Also EU Users will try to use the better AI products with e.g. a VPN to the US.

Most won't. Remember that this is an issue almost noone (outside a certain bubble) is aware of.

As an European, this sounds like an excellent solution.

US megatech funding our public infrastructure? Amazing. Especially after US attacked us with tarrifs.

Haha, huge, HUGE L-take. Go to any library or coffeeshop, and you'll see most students on their laptops are on ChatGPT. Do you think they won't immediately figure out how to use a VPN to move to the "better" models from the US or China if the EU regulations cripple the ones available in the EU?

EU's preemptive war on AI will be like the RIAA's war on music piracy. EU consumers will get their digital stuff one way or another, only EU's domestic products will just fall behind by not competing to create a equally good product that the consumers want.

Well, if there's not much difference why bother. If there are copyright restrictions on things people care about Europeans are perfectly capable of bypassing restrictions, like watching the ending of Game of Thrones etc.

Just like Russian mega-energy powering your grid?

Bad idea.

Europe is digging a hole of a combination of suffocating regulation and dependance on foreign players. It's so dumb, but Europeans are so used to it they can't see the problem.

It's always the same argument, and it is true. The US retained an edge over the rest of the world through deregulating tech.

My issue with this is that it doesn't look like America's laissez-faire stance on this issues helped Americans much. Internet companies have gotten absolutely humongous and gave rise to a new class of techno-oligarchs that are now funding anti-democracy campaigns.

I feel like getting slightly less performant models is a fair price to pay for increased scrutiny over these powerful private actors.

> Do you think they won't immediately figure out how to use a VPN to move to the "better" models

I think they don't even know the term "model" (in AI context), let alone which one's the best. They only know ChatGPT.

I do think it's possible that stories spread like "the new cool ChatGPT update is US-only: Here's how to access it in the EU".

However I don't think many will make use of that.

Anecdotally, most people around me (even CS colleagues) only use the standard model, ChatGPT 4o, and don't even take a look at the other options.

Additionally, AI companies could quickly get in trouble if they accept payments from EU credit cards.

The problem is that misaligned AI will eventually affect everyone worldwide. Even if us Americans cause the problem, it won't stay an American problem.

If Europe wants leverage, the best plan is to tell ASML to turn off the supply of chips.