StephensonHarwood's AI Afternoon, 22-May-2024

Traditionally event posts are humblebrags (“I’ve been to something!”; “I matter!”; “Hire me!”) to feed LinkedIn’s unforgiving algo (well, at least mine are). With this one I want to make an exception and sincerely thank the entire team at Stephenson Harwood LLP for their great event on AI regulations last week, along with some feedback.

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Simon Bollans , that intro session on the EU AI Act was long and intense, but I think I know what the reasoning behind it was. Most people in professional services have heard of the EU AI Act by now, but how many have actually looked into it? All 459 pages of it…? Probably not that many, so I appreciate that you took it upon yourself to introduce the main tenets. In my view the only important part that was missing in your otherwise perfectly comprehensive presentation was the mention of Chapter XII Article 99 – penalties; specifically the fact that the penalty provisions come into effect TWELVE months after the official publication of the Act. I feel just about everyone out there is completely oblivious to it and I expect a great deal of schadenfreude next summer.

Fun fact: the original draft of the Act from 2021 was a mere 141 pages.

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Jenna Franklin , that session on AI governance was probably my favourite, because it is my focus area, both professionally and academically. The session was great, I just wish we could have spent more time on it, because I strongly believe that AI governance is – for reasons unknown – being completely ignored by the industry; like it doesn’t exist (I have my “technically unemployed” professional status to vouch for that), which is beyond baffling. This thing will just explode in people’s faces like the regulatory crackdown post-2008.

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One observation that is no longer surprising, but continually disappointing (baffling, actually) is that your otherwise well-attended event had a very modest representation from financial services, and not even always people from Compliance / GC; sometimes just a semi-random person who came mostly for their own education. I don’t know how and why, but, again, I expect this to come to back to bite the industry with a vengeance very soon.

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Katie Hewson and Jenna Franklin , that session on personal data consideration was a masterclass, 10/10. I think the next topic worth taking on the agenda is non-personal data considerations; something that is currently more or less a non-topic because personal data has stolen all the limelight due to GDPR.

Separately, I think soon enough we will be due for a session on personality rights.

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Michael Bywell , thank you for the session on litigation, and especially from brining up the now-forgotten Tyndaris case. I strongly feel that AI liability will soon become a topic in its own right (and a major one!), with the AI Liability Act draft being a very interesting indication of things to come.

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Simon Bollans , thank you for the session on contracting for AI. I take a slightly different view on this topic; your presentation seemed to apply a standard third-party outsourcing blueprint, which itself is based on FCA’s comprehensive outsourcing guidelines. I think AI is much more complicated and nuanced than this, because more or less all of AI is based on third-party products (and I don’t mean open-source, but available for free from for-profit entities, like TensorFlow from Google or Llama from Meta). I mean… how do you apply otherwise perfectly reasonable third-party safeguards to technologies like this?

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The only respectfully critical bit of feedback I have is for the final panel discussion (whose participants shall remain nameless). My (obviously biased) impression was that 2 out 3 participants (the two GCs) very clearly exemplified the problem with AI governance and regulatory compliance: they were “general purpose” GCs hurriedly “repurposed” to deal with AI, with very clearly limited understanding of the nuances of AI, and even more so AI regulation, governance and applications. The ethics guy knew what he was talking about, but he fell short on engagement and charisma.

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Massive thanks to the entire Stephenson Harwood LLP team for organizing the event – it was clear that a great deal of thought and work was put into it. Special thanks to Mark Lewis for the invite and his presence on the day and to Elise Delegue Magne for the photos. Looking forward to more!

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