The CEOs of two of the world’s largest tech enterprises, Meta and Spotify, have warned the European Union (EU) that its development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) risks falling behind.
In a joint statement, Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek, the respective founders and CEOs of Meta and Spotify, echo a sentiment heard throughout the realism of tech, finance, business and politics over the past few years – that AI is going to have a revolutionary impact on the economies of various countries, regions and continents.
Zuckerberg and Ek believe that the EU has the chance to be a world leading force in AI, and is on track to achieve this. The continent is home to an extensive technology industry, one which has been putting a lot of time, effort and money into developing its AI models.
In tandem, EU policymakers have also been crafting regulations which will govern this emerging and rapidly evolving technology, with safety and responsibility key values, as in other jurisdictions like the UK and US.
One such piece of legislation is the EU AI Act, which came into force at the start of this month. The legislation mainly focuses on safety, classifying AI tools and products from low risk to high-risk to unacceptable risk.
The EU’s regulatory endeavours may be doing more harm than good however, in the view of Meta and Spotify’s leadership. Zuckerberg and Ek are particularly concerned with how regulation of open source AI models could potentially hinder the tech’s future.
“The stark reality is that laws designed to increase European sovereignty and competitiveness are achieving the opposite,” the statement reads.
“This isn’t limited to our industry: many European Chief Executives, across a range of industries, cite a complex and incoherent regulatory environment as one reason for the continent’s lack of competitiveness.”
For those unfamiliar with tech jargon, open source AI models are ones where the weights – which define the internal structure and decision-making of the AI – are released publicly with a permissive licence.
Zuckerberg and Ek believe that rolling out open source AI “ensures power isn’t concentrated among a few large players and, as with the internet before it, creates a level playing field’. Such a level playing field will mean Europe’s various AI startups and SMEs will be able to compete with bigger firms more effectively.
This is an interesting point made by the two CEOs, given they are the leaders of two of Europe’s – and the world’s, for that matter – biggest tech enterprises. This comes at a time when many regulators have been expressing concern regarding the potential advantages Big Tech firms have over smaller competitors.
Meta is routinely cited as one of the world’s leading Big Tech companies, along with the likes of Google and Microsoft, whilst Spotify is the world leader in music streaming with a total of free and paying users topping over 626 million.
This is not to say that Spotify and Meta do not have their own interests in mind, with the statement notably highlighting that the latter will not be able to release upcoming open-source AI models, like Lama, under EU AI regulations. Regardless, if the duo’s statement is anything to go by, Meta and Spotify do not want to guard AI, and wish to see the tech used as widely as possible.
“The internet largely runs on open-source technologies, and so do most leading tech companies,” the CEOs’ joint statement continues.
“We believe the next generation of ideas and startups will be built with open-source AI, because it lets developers incorporate the latest innovations at low cost and gives institutions more control over their data.
“It is the best shot at harnessing AI to drive progress and create economic opportunity and security for everyone.”
Zuckerberg and Ek note that the EU is home to more open source AI developers than even the US, one of the biggest development markets for tech.
Ensuring the right regulatory environment for these companies will be critical to the sector’s future growth – but EU leadership may have an entirely different approach in mind to these two tech giants.
The European Commission (EC) has not issued any response to Meta and Spotify’s statement, as of yet.
