00:00The EU AI Act is the first comprehensive legislation on AI, which was started as a proposal in 2021, finally
00:09adopted in the EU in 2024.
00:11The main goal was to ensure that AI systems that are placed in the market respond to certain requirements aimed
00:20to protect safety and fundamental rights of consumers.
00:24We have hyper-hacking scandals, we have rogue agents, the specter of unemployment apocalypse, actual extinction fears.
00:36I mean, does the EU AI Act really protect people in a real sense from these threats?
00:42Yes and no, in the sense that the AI Act was not, at least initially, conceived to deal with those
00:50sorts of situations.
00:51The AI Act is one law. It certainly can fix certain problems, but not all of them.
00:57Give us an example of a specific problem with AI that the EU AI Act is going to help people
01:04with.
01:04So we don't want people to be discriminated against in decisions that have a real impact on their life, like
01:13access to credit, access to schools, access to education, access to public services that are fundamentally biased.
01:20What kind of things could AI discriminate on there in terms of a person's credit score? Would it be, well,
01:26the AI could make a decision based on protected characteristics, so for instance, race, exactly, or age, or ethnic origin.
01:35So you cannot be allowed a different credit depending on your skin color. That's illegal.
01:41In reality, Europe, the EU, it's way behind China, way behind the US in terms of development.
01:47I mean, do EU regulations really matter in an age of global technology?
01:55That's a good question. I think they do in the sense that we live in a world that is based
02:02on different jurisdictions.
02:04So laws always matter.
02:06Is an EU-China framework possible, for example?
02:09I think it should. I think both China, US, and EU, all of them, needs to be speaking to each
02:17other.
02:19That's why I think China has also been considering, you know, its role in the context of the BRICS and
02:29the launch of the World AI Organization.
02:33The US going ahead with technology and no cost, you know, they want to win the technology to essentially be
02:39the first to reach AGI.
02:41And so China seems to pursue a different approach to sort of want to bring in at the table, through
02:48BRICS and the Global South, the importance of this global collaboration.
02:53So it's a very different way, in my view, to look at building alliances and shaping global governments.
