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upstart writes:

The EU's AI Act could have a chilling effect on open source efforts, experts warn:

The nonpartisan think tank Brookings this week published a piece decrying the bloc's regulation of open source AI, arguing it would create legal liability for general-purpose AI systems while simultaneously undermining their development. Under the EU's draft AI Act, open source developers would have to adhere to guidelines for risk management, data governance, technical documentation and transparency, as well as standards of accuracy and cybersecurity.

If a company were to deploy an open source AI system that led to some disastrous outcome, the author asserts, it's not inconceivable the company could attempt to deflect responsibility by suing the open source developers on which they built their product.

"This could further concentrate power over the future of AI in large technology companies and prevent research that is critical to the public's understanding of AI," Alex Engler, the analyst at Brookings who published the piece, wrote. "In the end, the [E.U.'s] attempt to regulate open-source could create a convoluted set of requirements that endangers open-source AI contributors, likely without improving use of general-purpose AI."

In 2021, the European Commission — the EU's politically independent executive arm — released the text of the AI Act, which aims to promote "trustworthy AI" deployment in the EU as they solicit input from industry ahead of a vote this fall, EU. institutions are seeking to make amendments to the regulations that attempt to balance innovation with accountability. But according to some experts, the AI Act as written would impose onerous requirements on open efforts to develop AI systems.

In a recent example, Stable Diffusion, an open source AI system that generates images from text prompts, was released with a license prohibiting certain types of content. But it quickly found an audience within communities that use such AI tools to create pornographic deepfakes of celebrities.

[...] Not every practitioner believes the AI Act is in need of further amending. Mike Cook, an AI researcher who's a part of the Knives and Paintbrushes collective, thinks it's "perfectly fine" to regulate open source AI "a little more heavily" than needed. Setting any sort of standard can be a way to show leadership globally, he posits — hopefully encouraging others to follow suit.

"The fearmongering about 'stifling innovation' comes mostly from people who want to do away with all regulation and have free rein, and that's generally not a view I put much stock into," Cook said. "I think it's okay to legislate in the name of a better world, rather than worrying about whether your neighbour is going to regulate less than you and somehow profit from it."

To wit, as my colleague Natasha Lomas has previously noted, the EU's risk-based approach lists several prohibited uses of AI (e.g. China-style state social credit scoring) while imposing restrictions on AI systems considered to be "high-risk" — like those having to do with law enforcement. If the regulations were to target product types as opposed to product categories (as Etzioni argues they should), it might require thousands of regulations — one for each product type — leading to conflict and even greater regulatory uncertainty.

[...] "Open innovation and responsible innovation in the AI realm are not mutually exclusive ends, but rather complementary ones," Delangue, Ferrandis and Solaiman said. "The intersection between both should be a core target for ongoing regulatory efforts, as it is being right now for the AI community."

That well may be achievable. Given the many moving parts involved in EU rulemaking (not to mention the stakeholders affected by it), it'll likely be years before AI regulation in the bloc starts to take shape.

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