Stockholm – Executives of American tech giants Google and Yuan It said that the AI industry in Europe was hampered by excessive regulation, adding to the rhetoric of the Donald Trump administration that strict technical rules in the region are killing innovation.
Speaking at the Techarina Tech conference in Stockholm, both Google and Meta’s public policy leaders used the stage as a platform to express their concerns about Bloc’s strict regulation of rigorous approaches such as AI and machine learning.
“I think there is a broad consensus now that there is a problem with the regulation of technology in Europe, sometimes it’s too dispersed, like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), sometimes it’s as far as AI ACT,” Meta Director Chris Yiu Public The policy told audiences of tech founders and investors on Thursday on Techarina.
“But the result of all this is that the product is delayed or overwhelmed, and European citizens and consumers suffer,” he said.
Yiu pulled out a pair of Meta’s recently launched Ray Brown brand glasses that use AI to convert voice from one language to another or to describe images that are visually impaired.
“This is a profound and very user-friendly application of the technology, and it’s slow to reach Europe because we’re involved in regulatory issues,” Yiu said.
Meta only started rolling out AI capabilities for its Thunder Brown Lens Glass in November, after the company claimed it needed to comply with Europe’s “complex regulatory systems.”
Meta has previously expressed concerns about the ability to comply with the AI bill, a landmark EU law that establishes the legal and regulatory framework for the technology, marking “unpredictable” implementation is a central issue.
The company also said that GDPR (the EU’s Data Privacy Framework framework launched in 2018) has launched its glasses in EU countries due to the issue of Meta using Instagram and Facebook user data to train its AI models.
Dorothy Chou, head of public policy at Google Deepmind, said the key issue in Europe’s method of regulating artificial intelligence technology is that the AI Act was designed before Chatgpt came out.
The AI bill was first introduced by the European Commission (the EU’s executive body) in April 2021. Openai launched Chatgpt in November 2022.
“There is a way to leverage policies to create a better investment environment to promote business to promote business,” Zhou said.
“I think it’s difficult when you regulate on a time scale that doesn’t fit in with the technology,” Chou added. “I think what we need to do is regulate to ensure there are responsible technology applications, but also ensure the industry It is thriving in the right way.”
Large-scale technology boosts bets
Large tech companies have often been raising their speech in response to EU technical regulations and Strengthen lobbying Trying to soften all aspects of the AI bill.
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, told Politico last month that the EU Code of Practice for General AI (GPAI) models refers to systems such as Openai’s GPT GPT large language model or LLMS – is “stepped out” One wrong direction.”
The EU AI Office released the second batch of codes of practice for the GPAI system in December, under the newly created institutional oversight model of the AI Act.
Earlier this month, Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan suggested in a live interview with Brussels that the tech giant would not sign the code in its current form.
He said the rule “overtakes beyond the requirements of the AI Act” and imposes “unfeasible and technically unfeasible requirements.”
President Donald Trump’s new administration has been timid about the tech giant’s defense of EU technical regulations.
At the International AI Action Summit in Paris last week, U.S. Vice President JD Vance blew up Europe as Europe is too focused on regulating artificial intelligence rather than embracing the growth potential of technology.
Coordinate startup rules
Big Tech is not alone in demanding a more streamlined regulatory regime for technology companies operating in Europe.
Several venture capitalists who invest in European tech startups have also condemned the complex regulatory compliance burden of their portfolio companies.
Even though the U.S. has been pushing for things like $500 billion Stargate Investment Project Around the “hopeful” message of AI, “European narratives tend to be more “dramatic”.
The region needs to start thinking about “beyond GDPR, beyond EU AI Act” and generate technological success stories to make people “excited” their commitment to technology.
Lightspeed is an investor in the French AI unicorn Mistral and is often touted as Openai’s main European rival.
Last year, tech entrepreneurs in the region proposed a new plan to address market regulations that were scattered among the 27-member group. Establish the so-called “28th regime”. The legal framework proposed within the EU provides companies with alternatives to member states’ own national rules rather than replacing them.
For example, under the 28th regime, there is a European corporate regulation that makes it easier to establish a public limited liability company in the EU.
Companies like Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus are one of the startups that want to create a new entity under the 28th regime, called the “EU Corporate”.
“Europe is a scattered place, and all you want to do is hire in any country,” Luke Pappas, a partner at London venture capital firm NEA, told CNBC at the Techarena attractions: .
One of the key issues in attracting talent in this way is that the current “providing the cross-border process of stocks in Europe is not easy”, Pappas said.
He added: “For example, if we can standardize the interests, it would be a lot of help.”
