? The AI Act enters into force tomorrow

AI policy & regulation | Edition #117

?? Hi, Luiza Jarovsky here. Welcome to the 117th edition of this newsletter on AI policy & regulation, read by 30,500+ subscribers in 140+ countries. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

?? Personal request: dear readers, I'm moving this newsletter from LinkedIn to my Substack , where I have more autonomy, more features and can build a closer relationship with readers. ?? Please subscribe to my Substack here . To receive all editions and support my work, choose a paid subscription. Thank you!

? The AI Act enters into force tomorrow

The EU AI Act enters into force tomorrow - August 1st - and its provisions will become enforceable in stages:

? February 2025:?Chapters I?(general provisions)?& II?(prohibited AI systems) will apply;

? August 2025:?Chapter III?Section 4?(notifying authorities),?Chapter V?(general purpose AI models),?Chapter VII?(governance),?Chapter XII?(confidentiality and penalties), and?Article 78?(confidentiality) will apply,?except for?Article 101?(fines for General Purpose AI providers);

? August?2026: the whole AI Act will apply, except for Article 6(1) & corresponding obligations (one of the categories of high-risk AI systems);

? August 2027:?Article 6(1) & corresponding obligations will apply.

?? This is the AI Act's official link .

?? On the topic of AI governance, compliance, and regulation, last week, I had a 1-hour live conversation with Barry Scannell (partner at William Fry), and you can't miss it. Watch the recording here :

?? To dive deeper and master the AI Act's main concepts and rules, join the next cohort of my EU AI Act Bootcamp . To learn more about emerging challenges in AI, tech & privacy, join my 4-week Bootcamp on the topic too (it's our flagship AI Bootcamp, already in its 10th edition - save your spot!):

?? Learn more

?? AI lawsuits you should be following

AI lawsuits are popping?up and shaping the?future of AI. If you work in AI, it's a great idea to keep an eye on them. Here are 10 recent AI lawsuits you can't miss:

1.?UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Recording Corporation, Atlantic Records, Rhino Entertainment, The All Blacks, Warner Music International & Warner Records vs. Suno.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement

Date: 24/Jun/2024

Country: US

?? Link

2. Andre Dubus III & Susan Orlean vs. NVIDIA.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement

Date: 02/May/2024

Country: US

?? Link

3. The Intercept Media vs. OpenAI & Microsoft.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement

Date: 28/Feb/2024

Country: US

?? Link

4. The NY Times vs. Microsoft & OpenAI.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement

Date: 27/Dec/2023

Country: US

?? Link

5.?Mike Huckabee, Relevate Group, David Kinnaman, Tsh Oxenreider, Lysa TerKeurst &John Blase vs.?Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Bloomberg, EleutherAI

Cause of action: Copyright infringement.

Date: 17/Oct/2023

Country: US

?? Link

6. Author's Guild and others vs. Open AI.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement

Date: 19/Sep/2023

Country: US

?? Link

7.?A.T. & J.H vs. OpenAI & Microsoft.

Cause of action: Privacy infringement

Date: 05/Sep/2023

Country: US

?? Link

8.?J.L., C.B., K.S., P.M., N.G., R.F., J.D. & G.R vs. Google.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement, privacy infringement, unfair competition

Date: 11/Jul/2023

Country: US

?? Link

9. Kadrey, Silverman & Golden vs. Meta.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement, unfair competition

Date: 07/Jul/2023

Country: US

?? Link

10. Paul Tremblay & Mona Awad vs. Open AI.

Cause of action: Copyright infringement

Date:?28/Jun/2023

Country: US

?? Link

?? Want to learn more about AI lawsuits?

In this week's paid edition of the newsletter - ?? The AI lawsuit avalanche is coming - I discussed the Patagonia and the CVS AI lawsuits and what they can tell us about the future of AI litigation. ?? Upgrade to paid and get immediate access to the article.

??? AI & competition

The European Commission, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published a?joint statement , and it's a?must-read?for everyone in AI governance. Important info:

?? According to the statement, these are some of the major competition issues that must be constantly scrutinized:

"1. Concentrated control of key inputs. Specialized chips, substantial compute, data at scale, and specialist technical expertise are critical ingredients to develop foundation models. This could potentially put a small number of companies in a position to exploit existing or emerging bottlenecks across the AI stack and to have outsized influence over the future development of these tools. This could limit the scope of disruptive innovation, or allow companies to shape it to their own advantage, at the expense of fair competition that benefits the public and our economies.

2. Entrenching or extending market power in AI-related markets. Foundation models are arriving at a time when large incumbent digital firms already enjoy strong accumulated advantages. For example, platforms may have substantial market power at multiple levels related to the AI stack. This can give these firms the ability to protect against AI-driven disruption, or harness it to their particular advantage, including through control of the channels of distribution of AI or AI-enabled services to people and businesses. This may allow such firms to extend or entrench the positions that they were able to establish through the last major technological shift to the detriment of future competition.

3. Arrangements involving key players could amplify risks. Partnerships, financial investments, and other connections between firms related to the development of generative AI have been widespread to date. In some cases, these arrangements may not harm competition but in other cases these partnerships and investments could be used by major firms to undermine or coopt competitive threats and steer market outcomes in their favour at the expense of the public."

?? Read the joint statement here .

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?? AI paper alert

The paper "Generative?AI?Can Harm Learning" by Hamsa Bastani, Osbert Bastani, Alp Süngü, Haosen Ge, ?zge Kabakc? & Rei Mariman?is an interesting read for everyone in AI. Quotes:

"(...) a key question that remains is how generative AI affects how humans learn novel skills, both in educational settings and through the course of performing their jobs. This process of skill acquisition is referred to as human capital development and is critical for safeguarding productivity in the long term. When technology automates a task, humans can miss out on valuable experience performing that task. As a consequence, such a technology may induce a tradeoff where they improve performance on average but introduce new failure cases due to reduced human skill. For example, overreliance on autopilot led the Federal Aviation Administration to recommend that pilots minimize their use of this technology. Their pre-cautionary guidance ensures that pilots have the necessary skills to maintain safety in situations where autopilot fails to function correctly."?(pages 2-3)

"Our main results are two-fold. First, students in the GPT Tutor (resp., GPT Base) arm perform 127% (resp., 48%) better on the practice problems compared to students in the control?arm. This finding is consistent with prior work on the benefits of ChatGPT in improving human?abilities on a variety of tasks. Second, on the exam, students in the GPT Base arm perform statistically significantly worse than students in the control arm by 17%; this negative effect?is essentially eradicated in the GPT Tutor arm, though we still do not observe a positive effect. These results suggest that while access to generative AI can improve performance, it can?substantially inhibit learning. Our results have significant implications for tools based on generative AI—while such tools have the potential to improve human performance, they must be?deployed with appropriate guardrails when learning is important." (page 4)

?? Read the full paper here .

?? I recently discussed the topic in this newsletter in the context of Google's statement that its AI assistant will do the online "legwork" for us. When AI does the intellectual and creative "legwork," what remains for us? What will happen to our brains? Is it productive from a human perspective?

?? This is an extremely important topic, especially given the accelerated pace of AI development and adoption, when companies from every industry are pressured to add some sort of AI-based functionality to longstanding products and services.

?? Share

?? Are you looking for a speaker in AI, tech & privacy?

I would welcome the opportunity to:

? Give a talk at your company;

? Speak at your event;

? Coordinate a private AI Bootcamp for your team (15+ people).

?? Learn more here .

?? AI Governance is HIRING

Below are 10 AI Governance positions posted in the last few days. Bookmark, share & be an early applicant:

1. BASF (Spain):?Data & AI Governance Facilitation - apply

2. CIBC (Canada):?Director, AI Governance - apply

3. JLR (UK):?Lead AI Governance Specialist - apply

4. Legile (Belgium)?AI Governance Specialist - apply

5. TEKsystems (Canada): AI Governance Specialist - apply

6. Google (US):?Technical Program Manager, AI Governance - apply

7. ByteDance (UK):?Senior Counsel - AI Governance & Tech Policy - apply

8. Perficient (US):?Program Manager, AI Governance?(remote) - apply

9. SCE (US):?Senior Advisor, AI Governance - apply

10. EY (India): Manager, AI Governance (Risk Consulting) - apply

?? For more AI governance and privacy job opportunities, subscribe to our weekly job alert . Good luck!

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? The EU AI Act enters into force tomorrow: get ready!

To join the next cohorts of our AI Bootcamps (September), save your spot (more than 850 people have participated in our training programs - don't miss them):

1. Emerging Challenges in AI, Tech & Privacy (4 weeks)

??? Tuesdays, September 3 to 24 - learn more

2. The EU AI Act Bootcamp (4 weeks)

??? Wednesdays, September 4 to 25 - learn more

?? Registration

?? Thank you for reading!

If you have comments on this week's edition, reply to this email or write to me , and I'll get back to you soon.

All the best, Luiza