Regulation on artificial intelligence in the EU is “stuck”, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg said, warning that Europe is in danger of becoming a “museum continent”.
In a conversation with the US ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin on Thursday the Meta executive said while regulation was necessary, it had to be balanced with innovation. “What’s the point in being the first to regulate if you are the last to innovate?” he asked.
Mr Clegg also dismissed the “breathless, dystopian way” AI had been discussed in the public sphere, saying time had been lost “dwelling on largely nonsensical fears”.
“In fact, the things that we should worry about is the way in which AI can accelerate and accentuate problems that we already know about: misinformation, disinformation, synthetic content, you know, unpleasant, explicit content,” he said.
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Generative AI, which has exploded in popularity since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, has the potential to disrupt multiple industries, he said. Mr Clegg predicted AI would play an increasingly important role in the provision of public services, from health to education.
“I think relatively soon most of us will feel uncomfortable going to medical appointments and receiving treatment or diagnosis from a medical professional who is not assisted by AI in exactly the same way that I would feel very uncomfortable now to get on to an aircraft and see that the pilot was not assisted by technology,” he said.
“I think we will very quickly see that it’s the combination of human expertise and the assistance of AI, which creates this sort of virtuous circle of improved public services.”
Open source could also play a significant role in accessing the technology, he said.
“It’s almost better to think about [AI] like the internet itself. It’s a total rewiring of the very fundamentals,” he said.
“Given that this is a general knowledge technology which is going to be used by entrepreneurs, researchers, hospitals, schools, and given that it’s very concentrated in the hands of companies, I think the biggest single question is how do you democratise access?” he said. “You’ve got this lopsided thing. Everyone’s going to rely on it, but only a very small number of companies actually generate the baseline layer technology.”
Mr Clegg said the open source approach, such as that taken by Meta with its Llama models, would be vital in helping more people to access the technology,
“I think it’s particularly important for Ireland and for Europe, because Europe just doesn’t have the means to build astonishing, expensive architecture infrastructure that you need to create a foundation model in the first place,” he said. “So to rely, if you like, on the generosity of strangers, in this case through an open source form, it seems to me is going to be an absolutely vital thing for the future.”
However, regulation could chill innovation in the sector. Mr Clegg noted the EU’s AI act was created before generative AI was in the public sphere, and said that authorities had to “retrofit” the legislation to make it apply to the new technology.
“There’s quite a lot of fighting yesterday’s battles. I think that’s often the tendency [with] regulators; they are dealing with one issue, even though the convoy has moved on. That’s certainly the case here. They’re trying to micromanage a technology which is evolving very fast.”
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