Episode Info
- Season16
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Suzanne Lynch
Suzanne Lynch is POLITICO's Chief Brussels Correspondent who just returned from Strasbourg, providing an inside look at how the proposed EU artificial intelligence regulation law is shaping up.
Episode Summary
Two major decisions by European entities this week will likely transform how the world interacts with technology. First, the European Parliament passed legislation that could introduce some of the first major regulations around the use of artificial intelligence, including how the police deploy facial recognition systems. POLITICO's Chief Brussels Correspondent Suzanne Lynch just returned from Strasbourg, where the bill was being debated. She provides an inside look at how the proposed law is shaping up and the ways other governments are likely to use it as a model for their own rules. Additionally, the European Commission took steps to crack down on Google's dominance of online ads. This move may end up leading to the breakup of the company, which has dominated the tech sector for decades.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: I'm Julia McFarlane, host of One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape our world. Together with my cohost, the former chief of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, we unpack the key decisions, past, present, and future that matter to us all. We drop new episodes every Thursday. But today, we're bringing you One More Decision, smart analysis of the latest breaking news around the world with Global Situation Room president Brett Bruen, who served as the White House director of global engagement during the Obama administration.
INTERVIEW
Bruen: Over to you, Brett. Thank you, Julia. And it's good to be back with you here on One More Decision, where today we're joined by chief Brussels correspondent for POLITICO and host of EU Confidential, Suzanne Lynch. And I wanted to sit down, Suzanne, and chat a little bit. It's been a very eventful week with regards to the EU and technology. You were in Strasbourg for what arguably is the most important vote to date on artificial intelligence. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened and what does it mean?
Lynch: Yes. Great to be with you, Brett. I'm just back in Brussels having been down in Strasbourg for a few days. And as you say there, this was a significant moment for the EU and tech regulation. The European Parliament took its first vote on the AI Act. That's the Artificial Intelligence Act. Now, suppose to explain the background here, like everything in the EU, nothing is straightforward. But the way it works is that the European Commission, which has the power to kind of initiate legislation. It proposes AI Act quite a while ago. And now this was the turn of the European Parliament to have its say. So the European Parliament did make a vote on this, make a judgment on this. It backed the law, but it now is going to go into negotiations with the commission and the European Council, the other parts of the EU. And at the end of that process, we will have the final law. So, you know, these things in the EU take time, but this was a very, very significant moment for the European Parliament and indeed for the EU. The EU has always seen itself as kind of the body that has been ahead in tech regulation. As someone said to me, down in Strasbourg, that's what the EU like to do. It likes to regulate. So it feels that it's kind of getting ahead of this very much emerging, evolving technology.
Bruen: And yet there is certainly some tension because on the one hand you have the likes of Emmanuel Macron, who is making an effort to try and attract more technology and investment into France. You have the former EU member, in the form of the United Kingdom, hosting a big summit in the coming months on AI and security. Then at the same time, you've got the European Union, as you rightly point out, starting to raise in a legislative way some of the roadblocks, potentially some of the cautionary signs. What are the implications of this? Because I understand it has a lot to do with things like facial recognition.
Lynch: You're absolutely right, and you're hitting on a key kind of challenge for the EU. On the one hand, it sees itself as a regulator. On the other hand, it does not want to be seen as a place, as a body that stifles innovation. And it's always trying to tread that line. I mean, it's significant. You mentioned Macron there. The EU commissioner who's been spearheading this, the AI Act, is Thierry Breton, who is the French commissioner. And, I mean, there is being honest, you know, around the EU quarter is some kind of cynicism saying, well, look. For Thierry Breton, the former kind of business executive, yes, he's talking about innovation. But at the same time, they are putting down barriers, some people would say, to innovation. And so I think the EU has always grappled with this. I think another element that's interesting is that in reality, most of the big successful tech companies that we all know are American. They are not European countries. So you're getting into this kind of idea about the EU being the policeman for, yes, the world's technology, but also very much a dominant American sphere here. And we saw those tensions even back during the Obama administration when Obama, who had a very good relationship, for example, with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at that time, publicly, you know, called out the EU sometimes for what the Americans saw as kind of overregulation, over-policing of tech. But that's not how the EU sees it. As I say, they feel like they are kind of getting the first mover advantage here. And there's a concept known here. It's called the Brussels Effect. And what it means is that once Brussels regulates, everyone else ends up following. Now to bring up the point you made there about this kind of facial recognition, this ended up being the key difference that distinguished the European Parliament's view on this, and they voted on it this week with the original proposal. And that was the idea of facial recognition. Can you use facial recognition data, except for in public places? This is an area that's considered one of artificial intelligence's riskiest uses. And, you know, a lot of European parliamentarians were making the point they don't want to be like China, that how it's, you know, facial recognition can be used for mass surveillance, and this has no place in EU democracy. So they did, in this vote that was secured this week, they did end up getting constraints around the use of that kind of mass surveillance tool. And I do see even some American players, American members of congress already pointing to this and saying, look. That's a good idea. We agree with the EU. Let's kind of take the EU's lessons when we're looking at regulating ourselves in the US.
Bruen: And indeed, there has been just an outpouring of concern, worrying even from the very engineers who have developed some of this ChatGPT and AI technology who've said, look, this is dangerous stuff. Indeed, I just saw a statistic from a recent survey saying that 42% of CEOs in that survey came back and said that AI within ten years could destroy humanity. So in some respects, the EU is not an outlier here. Indeed, they are taking, as you were suggesting, that first step, but one quite frankly, that a lot of us have been asking ourselves, when is this coming? And clearly, the EU is ready to move faster.
Lynch: Absolutely. I mean, you're right in that the pace of this development has been phenomenal. And one of the criticisms, if you like, of the EU's proposed legislation is that when the AI Act was first even proposed, ChatGPT was not really seen as a threat that it now is seen as. So it's almost always gonna be behind. I mean, the regulators are trying to always keep up with the pace of change in technology. Now EU officials would say, look, it's not gonna be perfect, but at least we're getting out there ahead. But some people are making the point that, you know, decisions are being made now about a law that — can I also point out because of this long legislative process, that in one way, it's very democratic, but also takes time? This may not be in place until 2026. So who knows, Brett, what where we would be with ChatGPT at that point. But look, the EU would say they have taken the initiative. They are trying to get a handle on this, and they feel that their citizens want this. As you have suggested there, there is a lot of concern, a lot of public concern about the mind-boggling potential of AI in ChatGPT and those kind of models of generative AI. And people are concerned. People are concerned about how it's gonna impact them, their privacy, but also the world of work. So these are all the conversations that are happening at this moment. And the EU feels that it's getting out ahead of this. It's gonna regulate. It may be imperfect, but they feel that they have made it general enough, talking about a risk-based approach, that they feel that that would be able to be adapted as needed for the specifics that may come along in the years to come.
Bruen: Well, I can't leave the topic of AI without pointing out an ironic news headline that just came through, which is that the European Union has now decided to conduct its own translations of statements, and they have to put them out into all of the EU member languages. Those are going to be done — the first drafts of them at least are going to be done by AI. So there is some irony here and you, as a consumer, perhaps one of the most voracious consumers of those statements, perhaps can speak to the dangers of misinterpretation in some of those statements. And it's certainly going to be interesting to see how that use of AI plays out.
Lynch: Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, there's a joke here about Brussels speak and Eurospeak. We've got this irony here in Brussels that now Britain has left the European Union. People may hear from my accent. I'm originally from Ireland, so I'm a, you know, native English speaker. But most people here are not members of the EU, even though the language, the business of the EU is conducted primarily in English, not in French, not in German. And some of that has been because, since the accession of a lot of the Eastern European countries over the last couple of decades who are much stronger in English rather than French, I think that's driven the dominance of English here. But you're right, the EU is looking at ways of deploying AI. And the employment for translators here is huge in Brussels. And one of the challenges they have already faced was during COVID. And everyone moved to remote meetings. Even in the last few days, I was at a briefing and a journalist asked a question remotely and the spokesperson from the EU very politely said, can you please turn on your camera? And he explained the reason is that the translators need to see you, need to see you speaking, and need to read your lips. That's part of the translation to be able to translate. And it was a real insight to all of us about how this job works. But you're right. There's now kind of fears among a lot of translators here that their jobs could be under threat because of the developments of AI. So look, it's a very kind of meta topic, but it is very much — this is a town, a city, an institution that runs through all these various languages and getting that precision and ensuring a lack of ambiguity is crucial to the work the EU does.
Bruen: One last major tech development this week was the European Commission's decision to pursue potentially a very strong action against Google, notably Google's ad service, which represents something like 70% of Google's global revenues. And they're saying that Google has not only a monopoly, but has been abusing that monopoly. What are the implications of this action?
Lynch: Yeah. I mean, it was a very significant move by the European Commission this week. Now they are preliminary charges, and Google has until September to respond. But it is the first time that the European Commission, even though it has fined Google before, it's fined the parent company before, that it's saying that it believes that these alleged offenses can only be resolved by Alphabet selling off parts of its business. So this idea of breaking up a big tech group is kind of like, you know, a new territory if you like. But again, it's like AI. I mean, the EU has always been very forthright in regulating tech companies. We've seen successive fines by Google about what they see as anticompetitive behavior. And we've also seen the EU and the commissioner here, Vestager, is a key figure here, who has brought cases against Apple, for example, about their tax affairs. And some people would argue that it's kind of using tax — tax is not supposed to be a competence of the EU. It's supposed to be something that each individual member state decides. But there is an argument that the commission was trying to kind of punish or penalize Apple for other matters by looking at its tax arrangements and saying that this was breaching single market rules of fairness, etcetera. I do think it's interesting as well. It just applies also to the conversation we just had on AI. We are entering endgame in the mandate of this European Commission. The mandate of European Commission is usually five years. We're into year five now. We're a year out of the European elections, basically. And so I think it is interesting to see some of the personalities here. This commissioner, the Danish commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, and then the French commissioner Thierry Breton, I mentioned. I mean, I think it's fair enough to say, you know, these are important figures in the EU who are thinking about their legacy. I mean, that's reality. And they're trying to get some of these judgments through and showing that the EU sees itself as a regulator and sees it has the authority to do so. But look, let's see what happens. As I say, Google still has some time to respond, and then there will probably be a legal over and back on this. But no doubt, another kind of new front in the EU's effort to regulate tech.
Bruen: Certainly an issue to keep an eye on and one that has global ramifications. The breakup of Google could obviously just have reverberations that not only touch full points in the tech sector, but in the business community and in our daily lives. So it is indeed gonna be a fascinating issue to follow, one that will have implications, broad impact on both Google, the tech sector, and indeed the business community, and just how we live our lives. Suzanne Lynch, chief Brussels correspondent for POLITICO, host of EU Confidential.
Mcfarlane: Thanks for taking the time to be with us on One More Decision. Great to join you. That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live. You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.
