Im not happy with the AI act in entirety either, but my point was that it’s hard to read it and say "this isn’t generally the right thing to do", where right means responsible and beneficial to society as a whole.
Is it responsible and beneficial if the end result is that we will be forever stuck using foreign made AI? And on top of that we will get brain drain for the people that want to work on AI?
Honestly? That’s a big philosophical question, and I don’t know if I can really answer it.
But I do personally prefer living in a value-backed society - even if the implementation is imperfect, even if I have to make personal concessions - over one that aims for maximised efficiency.
More fundamentally, imho the 20th and 21st century are about competition of systems. And the only system I can get behind is one that strives for minimal suffering. The EU or social liberal democracy isn’t that, but it comes closest.
The problem is that if your system loses then your system stops existing. This already is the case with AI - all the relevant AI is made according to other people's preferences and we have no say in it. Sure, we can regulate what kind of AI is used in the EU, but if they aren't selling AI to us directly, but instead using AI to make something that they sell to us then we can't compete with that.
In the end the only winner that emerges out of this is China. Tge EU is over regulating everything, the current US administration is randomly banning things left and right.
Maybe, but as I wrote in a sibling comment, I prefer to not go down the slippery slope of lowering our standards to compete with nations like the US or China - that isn't a battle the EU can win.
Don't forget that the EU is still a market so big noone can ignore us - especially for the US, we're the only opportunity for the growth required to keep their economy (and 401k pensions!) afloat. So there really is no immediate need to cave to their every whim all the time.
Of course this is nothing to rest on, and the EU has to improve on many fronts and also get better on the amount of regulation, but we're by no means in a bad position (yet.)
