Top managers warn: AI law endangers Europe's competitiveness!

Top managers warn: AI law endangers Europe's competitiveness!

More than 40 top managers of European companies have written an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. In this letter they express concerns about the upcoming regulations on artificial intelligence (AI) in the European Union. These warnings relate in particular to the complexity of the regulations, which could endanger the competitiveness of European companies. The managers are calling for the implementation of the new AI law, known as the AI ​​Act, to be postponed by two years to give companies more time to adapt, such as sueddeutsche.de reported.

Among the signatories of the letter are well-known companies such as Lufthansa, Mercedes-Benz and Philips. These critics from the tech industry describe the AI ​​Act as bureaucratic and anti-innovation. The managers' concerns should be seen in a broader context: While the EU Commission is working on a voluntary code of conduct for basic models such as GPT-4, Gemini or Llama, which should be available by August 2023, concerns are growing about the impact of such regulations on the innovative strength of European companies.

The AI ​​Act: Risks and Opportunities

The AI ​​Act aims to comprehensively regulate artificial intelligence by banning certain applications that are considered incompatible with European values. These include, among other things, social scoring and emotion recognition in the workplace. Ursula von der Leyen emphasizes that this regulatory framework is ultimately intended to increase Europe's competitiveness in the field of AI. At the same time, Emmanuel Macron also expresses concerns that measures that are too strict could lead to Europe falling behind international competitors, as stated in a supplementary report by faz.net is presented.

One of the central intentions of the AI ​​Act is to increase public trust in AI applications. This is intended to create a competitive advantage for the European economy. Nevertheless, studies show that European AI providers are only weakly positioned in generative AI compared to US competitors such as OpenAI/Microsoft, Google and Meta. Providers like Mistral AI are in the middle, while Aleph Alpha has stopped developing its own language model.

Regulatory hurdles and their effects

Companies that want to use generative AI must develop new skills and position themselves as operators. Unclear requirements for training measures could lead to companies being hesitant to use AI in a timely manner. The AI ​​Act therefore poses similar risks to competitiveness as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). According to a Bitkom study, legal restrictions and data protection requirements are perceived as significant hurdles.In order to allay companies' fear of regulatory consequences, a pragmatic approach to the AI ​​Act is recommended; This could include shorter training courses and fewer bureaucratic requirements for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In the context of these developments, it becomes clear that artificial intelligence is viewed as a great opportunity for the economy. Still, significant challenges remain, particularly for European providers who will struggle to catch up with US tech giants. The AI ​​Act therefore moves in an area of ​​tension between the necessary protection of innovation and the enablement of flourishing competition.