Tech company executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman have expressed support for government oversight of artificial intelligence after discussions with European Commission Thierry Breton.
The commissioner said on Friday that he and Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta Platforms, were “aligned” on EU artificial intelligence regulation, which is now in final negotiations. They agreed with the bloc’s risk-based approach and with measures such as watermarking, Breton said.
Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said he too agrees with the EU’s approach to AI, adding: “I really appreciate the European institution here and the foresight of taking this issue so seriously, also for the rest of the world.” .
“We look forward to working with you to be up and running early enough to deliver a European service that meets the European market,” Altman told Breton. OpenAI developed the popular chatbot ChatGPT, which has created a lot of interest in the possibilities of generative AI, the technology that produces text or images in response to a user’s input.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said his company “shared our support for the objectives of the AI Compact. While we need to study the details, we recognize that it is important for technology companies to be open about the work they are doing on AI and engage collaboratively across industry, governments and civil society.”
Friday’s debates were part of Breton’s tour this week of tech companies. After his visit to Meta, Breton said the owner of Facebook and Instagram appears well prepared to comply with Europe’s strict new content moderation rules, but will undergo a stress test of its systems next month. .
Meta presented “a lot of information” about its work to comply with the European Union’s Digital Services Law, but was also happy to run a stress test “so as not to forget anything,” he said.
Zuckerberg agreed to a trial in mid-July to assess how the company handles content moderation rules. Breton said that Meta has about 1,000 people working on the DSA implementation.
The CEO of Meta was interested in a future test of how the company’s platforms will handle the upcoming competition rules set out by the EU’s Digital Markets Law. Businesses must self-report as gatekeepers with certain core platform services on July 3.
Breton also said he urged Zuckerberg to increase resources to combat disinformation, especially Russian disinformation in Eastern European countries about the war in Ukraine. And she discussed a Wall Street Journal report on child predators attacking children on Meta’s Instagram photo-sharing site.
Clegg, in a tweet, called it a “constructive” conversation. “We invited his team to our Dublin campus to see how we are testing our processes before implementation,” he said.
Separately, Breton discussed artificial intelligence with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chipmaker, which leads the market in providing processors for AI. After the meeting, Huang told reporters that it was “extremely likely” that Nvidia would invest in Europe.
On Thursday, Breton met with Twitter owner Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino, telling reporters that the social media site needs to devote more resources to addressing sensitive content if it is to comply with the EU rules before the August deadline.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
