The European Union yesterday announced the creation of an "AI Office" of tech experts, lawyers and economists to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) under a sweeping new law.
The EU this year approved the world’s first comprehensive rules to govern AI, especially powerful systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT after long, intense negotiations.
First proposed in 2021, the bloc raced to get the law in the books after ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, leaving users stunned by its ability to churn out coherent text including poems within seconds.
Photo: AP
"The AI Office aims at enabling the future development, deployment and use of AI in a way that fosters societal and economic benefits and innovation, while mitigating risks," the European Commission said.
The 140-member AI Office will be established within the commission, which is the EU’s executive arm and also acts as the bloc’s powerful tech regulator.
"The Office will foster a European AI ecosystem that is innovative, competitive and respectful of EU rules and values," EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Defense Industry Thierry Breton said.
The EU’s law known as the "AI Act" has tougher rules for general-purpose AI systems such as ChatGPT and takes a risk-based approach to the technology.
The higher the risk to Europeans’ rights or health, for example, the greater the systems’ obligations to protect individuals from harms.
"Together with developers and a scientific community, the office will evaluate and test general purpose AI to ensure that AI serves us as humans and upholds our European values," EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said.
Companies will have to comply with the EU’s law by 2026, but rules covering AI models like ChatGPT will apply 12 months after the law becomes official.
The EU’s announcement came on the same day that EU auditors criticized the commission for failing to sufficiently invest in AI to achieve the bloc’s ambitions.
"Going forward, stronger governance and more — and better targeted — public and private investment in the EU will be paramount if the EU is to achieve its AI ambitions," the bloc’s spending watchdog said.
But the commission defended the bloc’s record and said it was investing more than one billion euros (US$1.1 billion) annually in AI research projects under different schemes.
TOP PERFORMER: The computer and optical products sector’s annual increase in output of 31.84 percent was the largest among Taiwan’s six major industries The industrial production index last month increased 16.06 percent year-on-year, rising for a third consecutive month as local manufacturing continued to boom, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Industrial production measures the change in the value of output produced by the local manufacturing, mining and utilities sectors. Last month’s growth, the largest annual expansion in 34 months, came as increases in manufacturing output, water supply, and electricity and gas production more than offset a retreat in mining output, the ministry said in a report. Manufacturing output, which accounted for 95.39 percent of the industrial production index, also rose for a third consecutive
Two global credit ratings firms lowered their forecasts for China’s property market, as an accelerating slump in home prices hampers the country’s efforts to rescue the sector. S&P Global Ratings now expects residential sales to drop 15 percent this year, more than the 5 percent decline it projected earlier. That would put sales below 10 trillion yuan (US$1.4 trillion), about half the peak in 2021, the ratings company said on Thursday. Fitch Ratings on Wednesday cut its annual sales estimate to a decrease of 15 to 20 percent, worse than an earlier estimate of a 5 to 10 percent drop. The ratings firms’
A US banking giant fired more than a dozen employees for “simulating keyboard activity,” highlighting a battle within productivity-obsessed corporate America to tame a culture of faking work with gizmos such as mouse jigglers. The sackings by Wells Fargo & Co come as employers use sophisticated tools — popularly called “tattleware” or “bossware” — on company-issued devices to monitor productivity in the age of hybrid work that took off after the COVID-19 pandemic. Some workers seek to outsmart them with tools such as mouse movers — which simulate cursor movement, preventing their devices from going into sleep mode and making them appear
POSITIVE OUTLOOK: Taiwan’s exports are improving, with a 20 percent increase in electronic product shipments and a smaller decline in non-electronic shipments Taiwan’s GDP is forecast to grow 4.36 percent year-on-year this year, as the economy is expected to benefit from rising exports and stable private investment, led by semiconductor companies and firms linked to the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said on Friday. The forecast represents a 0.67 percentage point increase from its previous estimate of 3.69 percent in March, Yuanta said in a report. Major research institutes since April have raised their predictions for Taiwan’s economic growth this year, with the estimated growth ranging from 3 percent to 3.94 percent — higher than the average of 3.14