“Very Tight Control”
In 2020, at the height of the Covid crisis, the EU had its 'Hamiltonian Moment'. To overcome the pandemic's economic shock, Member States agreed to back an unprecedented, capital markets-based 750 billion Euro funding scheme to kickstart the European economy. However, since then, it proved surprisingly hard to make sense of where all the money went. Apparently, one main oversight body is a rather informal committee of Member States. Now, internal documents paint a picture of peer scrutiny that remains at a general level, is conducted under tight deadlines, and is strongly limited by scarce resources. They also reveal an evolution of the process to a point what looks much like a mere formality.
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The EU’s Pacing Problem
The EU regulators face a pacing problem. This has been demonstrated several times during the legislative process of the AI Act itself: for example, the initial Commission proposal from 2021 did not include a definition of General Purpose AI (GPAI). The proposal did not anticipate the rise of Large Language Models like ChatGPT and GPT-4 but only addressed AI systems designed for specific purposes. This lacuna in the original proposal has haunted the EU Parliament, Council and Commission in the past final weeks of the trilogue negotiations, where the inclusion of so-called Frontier Models has been hotly contested. This blog post explores potential boosters for the EU's capacity to regulate AI: delegated legislation, soft law, and a centralized AI office.
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BigTech’s Efforts to Derail the AI Act
Big Tech is trying to water down the AI Act, which is supposed to be finalized before the end of this year. This is yet another chapter in the private sector's influence on governments to turn AI regulation into a toothless self-regulatory framework. The narratives that lobbying power is trying to install follow a well-known pattern. This blog post goes into detail and explains what's at stake.
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