Meta says it won't sign Europe AI agreement

Not just Meta, 40 EU companies urged EU to postpone roll out of the ai act by two years due to it's unclear nature. This code of practice is voluntary and goes beyond what is in the act itself. EU published it in a way to say that there would be less scrutiny if you voluntarily sign up for this code of practice. Meta would anyway face scrutiny on all ends, so does not seem to a plausible case to sign something voluntary.

One of the key aspects of the act is how a model provider is responsible if the downstream partners misuse it in any way. For open source, it's a very hard requirement[1].

> GPAI model providers need to establish reasonable copyright measures to mitigate the risk that a downstream system or application into which a model is integrated generates copyright-infringing outputs, including through avoiding overfitting of their GPAI model. Where a GPAI model is provided to another entity, providers are encouraged to make the conclusion or validity of the contractual provision of the model dependent upon a promise of that entity to take appropriate measures to avoid the repeated generation of output that is identical or recognisably similar to protected works.

[1] https://www.lw.com/en/insights/2024/11/european-commission-r...

Sounds like a reasonable guideline to me. Even for open source models, you can add a license term that requires users of the open source model to take "appropriate measures to avoid the repeated generation of output that is identical or recognisably similar to protected works"

This is European law, not US. Reasonable means reasonable and judges here are expected to weigh each side's interests and come to a conclusion. Not just a literal interpretation of the law.

Except that it’s seemingly impossible to prevent against prompt injection. The cat is out the bag. Much like a lot of other legislation (eg cookie law, being responsible for user generated content when you have millions of it posted per day) it’s entirely impractical albeit well-meaning.

I don't think the cookie law is that impractical? It's easy to comply with by just not storing non-essential user information. It would have been completely nondisruptive if platforms agreed to respect users' defaults via browser settings, and then converged on a common config interface.

It was made impractical by ad platforms and others who decided to use dark patterns, FUD and malicious compliance to deceive users into agreeing to be tracked.

It is impractical for me as a user. I have to click on a notice on every website on the internet before interacting with it - often which are very obtuse and don’t have a “reject all” button but a “manage my choices” button which takes to an even more convoluted menu.

Instead of exactly as you say: a global browser option.

As someone who has had to implement this crap repeatedly - I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of global time that has been wasted implementing this by everyone, fixing mistakes related to it and more importantly by users having to interact with it.

Yeah, but the only reason for this time wasteage is because website operators refuse to accept what would become the fallback default of "minimal", for which they would not need to seek explicit consent. It's a kind of arbitrage, like those scammy website that send you into redirect loops with enticing headlines.

The law is written to encourage such defaults if anything, it just wasn't profitable enough I guess.

The reality is the data that is gathered is so much more valuable and accurate if you gather consent when you are running a business. Defaulting to a minimal config is just not practical for most businesses either. The decisions that are made with proper tracking data have a real business impact (I can see it myself - working at a client with 7 figure monthly revenue).

Im fully supportive of consent, but the way it is implemented is impractical from everyone’s POV and I stand by that.

Are you genuinely trying to defend businesses unnecessarily tracking users online? Why can't businesses sell their core product(s) and you know... not track users? If they did that, then they wouldn't need to implement a cookie banner.

Retargetting etc is massive revenue for online retailers. I support their right to do it if users consent to it. I don’t support their right to do it if users have not consented.

The conversation is not about my opinion on tracking, anyway. It’s about the impracticality of implementing the legislation that is hostile and time consuming for both website owners and users alike

> Retargetting etc is massive revenue for online retailers

Drug trafficking, stealing, scams are massive revenue for gangs.