Once upon a time, in AI-AI-land

The First Country Blocking OpenAI ChatGPT Generative AI

Who is it and what’s the story behind it?

Photo by DeepMind on Unsplash

Once upon a time, AI was seen as a threat to humanity.

Those were the times

Humans feared and hated AI because it was more powerful, relentless, and brutal than men at reaching its goals, without any ethical concern balancing its will to reach the target. It was taking over jobs, reaching farther and farther ahead of humans in any economical, social, and political fields. And it was intruding on the personal and professional life of people through its never-ending network of sensing devices and algorithms. Those were the times of science fiction movies.

Nowadays, AI systems are evolving daily and people are thinking back to what happened in those times. Legal frameworks are being set up to monitor and guide this evolution, while tech companies work relentlessly to improve the models and train them in a better and better way.

Stop that AI!

On March 31st, 2023, the first country in the world decided to start the process of banning for the first time an AI system widely known and advertised to the general population.

This was not done out of the emotional fear of AI taking over the world. It was done through a judicial process of a dedicated government agency, based on a policy motivation rooted in a legal framework that has been in force for years.

If you don’t know already, you may wonder what country is it.

Well, it’s not a particularly libertarian country, for sure. It’s not one of the countries that leads the way towards AI development, like the US. But it’s not an obscurantist and totalitarian regime either. It’s not Russia, China or any other country where you would expect freedom would be heavily limited. It’s not what you would call an underdeveloped country.

As a matter of fact, it’s a fairly pleasant place, with a good share of contribution to the global GDP. It’s one of the G8 countries, it’s a popular tourist destination and all in all it also features a significant set of industries and innovation, especially in certain…