Tame the beast?! The European Union AI Act. — Part II

3 min readJul 2, 2023

In this blog article, I aim to summarize information about the following questions:

How does the EU Act affect research?
What is meant by regulatory sandboxes?
What are Pros/Cons of the EU AI Act?

It is the second part of my series on the EU AI Act after https://medium.com/@robert.aufschlaeger/tame-the-beast-the-european-union-ai-act-part-i-dbbcd0ffb7a9, where I summarize how the AI Act affects people and companies.

CompVis/stable-diffusion-v-1–4-original — prompt “A blue robot with yellow stars fighting against a general artificial intelligence with an iron paragraph symbol as its weapon. The general artificial intelligence is visualized as a robotic beast. Two robots are visualized fighting each other. One of them stands for European Union and the other for the AI beast”— plms — n_iter 5 — n_samples 1

How does the EU AI Act affect research?

Exemptions to Act’s rules are planned for research activities and AI components, that are provided under open-source licenses. [1]
The EU AI Act aims to stimulate research and development and promote collaboration and openness among organizations and regions. [2]
The EU AI Act implements a Lab culture, where AI excellence is thriving from the lab to the market. [6]
Stand-alone high-risk AI systems have to be registered in a european database. [7]
It affects research in ‘artificial intelligence methods’ [8]:

a) Machine learning approaches, including supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning, using a wide variety of methods including deep learning;

b) Logic- and knowledge-based approaches, including knowledge representation, inductive (logic) programming, knowledge bases, inference and deductive engines, (symbolic) reasoning and expert systems;

c) Statistical approaches, Bayesian estimation, search and optimization methods.

What is meant by AI regulatory sandboxes?

Controlled environments, where AI can be tested before deployed in production. [1]
They give the opportunity for try and error development, in the sense of implementing the AI Act “without being charged” when things go wrong. [3]
There are concerns about difficult implementation of AI in sandboxes. This involves Leadership, Access, Funding, Commercialisation, Flexibility, Legal Aspects, Testing & Quality and Expertise Building. [3]
The AI regulatory sandboxes are defined in Article 53 [4].
They will be established by Member States or the European Data Protection Supervisor.

What are Pros/Cons of the EU AI Act?

Cons

Paying customers do not exist in sandboxes.
There is a trade-off transparency vs. Intellectual Property Rights.
There might be inhibitions about not investing in AI due to the EU AI Act.
Uncertainties, because not all artificial intelligence methods can fully be explained.

Pros

The EU AI Act supports Open Innovation: Open Source, Open Data and Open AI (… it does not support O̶p̶e̶n̶A̶I̶).
It softens monopoly positions in the AI market.
The EU AI Act fosters research in ExplainableAI (XAI).
It promotes trustworthiness in AI by addressing risks in AI. [5]

Conclusion

Besides the EU AI Act, there are two more AI-related Acts in the Pipeline of the European Union [9]:

EU Data Act: focuses on data sharing obligations and has the goal to increase availability and interoperability of non-personal data.
EU Data Governance Act: aims to enable more data and good quality data to fuel innovation.

Personally, I am curious about the final versions of these AI related EU Acts and when and how they will be implemented in practice. I understand the doubts. However, I hope research in trustworthy and explainable AI benefits. In exemplary, I support the idea of Open Innovation, that might be spread through introducing these Acts. Last but not least, I am curious if there are local versions and how EU member countries will deal with the EU regulatories.

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Thanks for reading! Pls feel free to contact me or comment if there are questions, ideas or hints. My summary is not comprehensive, and I am happy to learn about additional aspects.

References

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230505IPR84904/ai-act-a-step-closer-to-the-first-rules-on-artificial-intelligence, 29.06.23

[2] https://blog-idceurope.com/how-the-new-european-ai-act-will-impact-the-ai-market/, 29.06.23

[3] https://aai.frb.io/assets/files/AI-Act-Impact-Survey_Report_Dec12.2022.pdf, 02.07.23

[4] https://artificialintelligenceact.com/title-v/article-53/, 02.07.23

[5] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai, 02.07.23

[6] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-lab-market, 02.07.23

[7] https://artificialintelligenceact.com/title-iii/chapter-5/article-51/, 02.07.23

[8] https://artificialintelligenceact.com/annexes-to-ai-act/, 02.07.23

[9] https://www.dataguidance.com/resource/data-regulation-ramps-europe-ai-act-data-act-and, 02.07.2023