The launch of ChatGPT in November last year has sparked a worldwide debate on Artificial Intelligence systems. Amidst Big Tech’s proclamations that these AI systems will revolutionise our daily lives, the companies are engaged in a fierce lobbying battle to water down regulations.
In April 2021, EU commissioners Margarethe Vestager and Thierry Breton presented a proposal for a European legal framework on AI. It was celebrated as the first global attempt to regulate AI — a technology that, as the commission observed, would “have an enormous impact on the way people live and work in the coming decades.”
But AI is also big business. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, doubled in value as Microsoft poured in $10bn [€9.44bn]. Google, in conversations with the EU, was presented as an “AI first company” with “AI driving all their products.”
Unsurprisingly, then, the European Union’s push to regulate has faced intense corporate lobbying attempts at every stage of the policy-making process.
A new report by Corporate Europe Observatory reveals how Big Tech has been able to slowly pick the AI Act apart.
Via years of direct pressure, covert groups, tech-funded experts — and a last-ditch push by the US government — tech companies have reduced safety obligations, sidelined human rights and anti-discrimination concerns, and secured carve-outs for some of their key AI products.
From the social media feeds we see on our timelines to AI-operated medical devices, AI is increasingly becoming part of our daily lives.
