In a new letter, signed by researchers from Harvard and Milan as well, major tech companies accuse the EU of “rejecting progress” and “betraying the ambitions of the single market.”

More than a dozen voices have signed a new letter criticizing the European regulation on artificial intelligence, the AI Act, a pioneering rule in the world to control the risks associated with this technology. Top executives from companies such as SAP, Spotify, Ericsson, Meta, Klarna, Mirakl, and Taxfix warn that the Old Continent “will fall behind in the age of AI due to the fragmentation of regulations.”

The letter, which follows a previous one led by Spotify and Meta, highlights that “Europe has become less competitive and innovative compared to other regions.” The signatories criticize that “in the absence of coherent rules, the EU will lose two cornerstones of AI innovation.”

The first is the development of open models, which are made available to everyone for free to use, modify, and develop, multiplying benefits and spreading social and economic opportunities. The second is the latest multimodal models, which work seamlessly across text, images, and voice, and will enable the next leap forward in AI.

“We are committed to user privacy and want clear rules at a global scale that transcend borders and give us transparency and clarity on how to act,” said Joelle Pineau, Vice President of AI Research at Meta, in statements to DISRUPTORES – EL ESPAÑOL. “Many European companies, which don’t have their own teams working on foundational models, are already seeing the potential of these technologies. And they want to have large open models available to them. They know it’s a crucial issue for their future.”

Regarding the big tech’s reluctance towards the AI Act, Carme Artigas, the Spanish official responsible for the latest efforts to approve this regulation, tells DISRUPTORES – EL ESPAÑOL, “Regulation needs to stay ahead to mandate certain behaviors. Ultimately, if you ask the banking sector if they like being regulated, they’ll say no. Or the pharmaceutical industry. They will try to avoid regulation until the very last minute, but at the same time, the day after the law takes effect, all companies are working to understand the AI Act, and they are happy to adopt it.”

From San Francisco, where she is participating in Dreamforce 2024, Artigas insisted, “We are not regulating technology, but rather high-risk use cases.”

This is a direct reference to the announcement that models like Meta’s LLaMA will not be available in Europe. In that sense, the signatories add, “AI development will take place elsewhere, depriving Europeans of the technological advances enjoyed by the US, China, and India.”

But the letter is even more blunt. It accuses the European Union of making regulatory decisions in a “fragmented and unpredictable” manner, while European Data Protection Authorities’ interventions have created enormous uncertainty about what types of data can be used to train AI. It also threatens that “the next generation of open-source AI models, and the products and services we build on them, will not comprehend or reflect European knowledge, culture, or languages.”

With all of this, the major tech companies present a very clear choice to EU regulators: “You can choose to reaffirm the principle of harmonization enshrined in regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR so that AI innovation happens here at the same scale and speed as elsewhere. Or you can continue rejecting progress, betray the ambitions of the single market, and watch as the rest of the world builds on technologies to which Europeans will not have access.”

“The current regulation lacks details on how it will be applied concretely and specifically. This prevents us from knowing how to train models, which is a process that takes several months,” concludes Pineau.

Big Names Against the AI Act

The critical letter is signed by some of the biggest names in the digital industry, both European and global. Among them are Börje Ekholm (President of Ericsson), Christian Klein (CEO of SAP), Daniel Ek (CEO of Spotify), Mark Zuckerberg and Yann LeCun (Meta), Miguel López (CEO of Thyssenkrupp), and Marco Tronchetti Provera (Pirelli).

Also participating are some of the most prominent startups in the AI ecosystem, such as Nabla, Unbabel, Flower Labs, Criteo, Kornia AI, YOOX, Ggml.ai, 8vance, and Bineric AI. Additionally, there are representatives from civil society (such as the Spaniard Miguel Ferrer, on behalf of Estech) and from Academia, including researchers Eugenio Valdano, Josef Sivic (Czech Technical University), Marco Baroni (ICREA), Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (University of Milan), Patrick Pérez, and Stefano Iacus (Harvard).