EU urged to protect grassroots AI research or risk losing out to US
The European Union risks handing control of artificial intelligence to US tech giants if it does not act to protect grassroots research in its forthcoming AI bill, it has been warned.
In an open letter coordinated by the German research group Laion, or Large-scale AI Open Network, the European parliament was told that “one size fits all” rules risked eliminating open research and development.
“Rules that require a researcher or developer to monitor or control downstream use could make it impossible to release open-source AI in Europe,” the letter says, which would “entrench large firms” and “hamper efforts to improve transparency, reduce competition, limit academic freedom, and drive investment in AI overseas”.
The letter adds: “Europe cannot afford to lose AI sovereignty. Eliminating open-source R&D will leave the European scientific community and economy critically dependent on a handful of foreign and proprietary firms for essential AI infrastructure.”
The largest AI efforts, from companies such as OpenAI and Google, are heavily controlled by their creators. It is impossible to download the model behind ChatGPT, for instance, and the paid-for access that OpenAI provides to customers comes with a number of restrictions, both legal and technical, on how it can be used. By contrast, open-source AI efforts involve creating an AI model and then releasing it for anyone to use, improve or adapt as they see fit.
“We are working on open-source AI because we think that sort of AI will be more safe, more accessible, and more democratic,” said Christoph Schuhmann, the lead of Laion. Unlike his peers at US AI businesses, who control billion-dollar organisations and frequently have a personal wealth in the hundreds of millions,
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