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By MARK SCOTT
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BUCKLE UP, DIGITAL BRIDGE IS A SCORCHER THIS WEEK. I’m Mark Scott, POLITICO’s chief technology correspondent, and in a sea of social media commentary, this video made me feel seen. Not sure if my ego can take being called a demigod, but (given my somewhat pale Celtic complexion), I’ll settle for the “day walker” moniker.
There’s a lot to get through this week. Let’s do this:
— The generative AI hysteria has got people (again) thinking we need global rules/standards for this technology. It won’t be easy.
— The clock is ticking for Congress to get anything done on digital. But that’s where the real action is taking place.
— Washington takes another step to challenge Brussels’ international dominance on data via a summit in London.
WHY GLOBAL AI RULEMAKING IS HARDER THAN YOU THINK
IF GENERATIVE AI HAS DONE ANYTHING (beyond freaking out your parents about the pending tech-powered apocalypse), it has focused minds on the need for the world of artificial intelligence to get rules — and fast — to calm everyone’s nerves. Luckily, such proposals, many of which span borders, are here. You’ve got UNESCO’s Ethics of AI Agreement; the Council of Europe’s Convention of AI; the European Union’s AI Act; the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights; morenational AI strategies than you can shake a stick at, including China’s AI rulebook; upcoming transatlantic “Trustworthy AI” Guidelines; and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) AI Principles.
Many of these (mostly voluntary) rulebooks, surprisingly, have a lot in common. Most call for greater transparency over how AI systems operate. They demand stronger data protection rights for people. They require independent oversight of automated decision-making. Some (looking at you, Brussels) outlaw specific — and ill-defined — “harmful” use cases for the technology. In short, in a digital policymaking world where officials almost never agree, there’s a lot of existing consensus about how to tackle the underlying questions linked to AI.
But (and there’s always a but) that doesn’t mean international rules/standards are going to happen anytime soon. “I’m just really afraid that the OECD countries need to get past arguing about small things and look at the bigger picture,” Audrey Plonk, head of the Paris-based group’s digital economy policy division, told me. She should know. Her team has been leading on cross-border AI policymaking longer than anyone, and the OECD’s AI Principles are viewed as the most comprehensive Western playbook for how to approach the technology.
Yet to the American-born OECD official, we are still twiddling our thumbs. Most countries agree the likes of accountability, transparency, human rights and privacy should be built into AI rulemaking. But what that actually looks like, in practice, still varies widely among countries. That means any form of international consensus — beyond platitudes about holding companies to account — is still in its infancy. “If we don’t move in the same direction on something as important as this, we’re all going to suffer,” added Plonk whose team just created a multistakeholder working group to address the future policymaking implications of AI. “You’ve got people still fighting around the edges.”
This problem comes down to two pain points. First: Different countries are approaching AI rulemaking in legitimately different ways. The European Union (mostly) wants a top-down government-led approach to mitigate harms (hence the AI Act). The United States, Japan and the United Kingdom would prefer an industry/sector-led approach to give the technology a chance to grow. China views this via the prism of national and economic security. Second: ChatGPT has set off a separate, but related, call for new oversight specifically aimed at generative AI — in ways that overlap with existing regulation that could hold this technology to account without the need for additional rulemaking.
Case in point: U.S. Senate leader Chuck Schumer’s (fuzzy) AI framework and an open letter from European politicians leading on the bloc’s AI Act. Both efforts name-checked the current AI craze as a reason to do something to rein in the technology’s potential excesses/abuses. But as you can see from above, such standards — even at a global scale — already exist. What’s missing are the finer points of policymaking required to go beyond platitudes around accountability, transparency and bias to figure out how that actually plays out in a cross-border set of enforceable rules.
And for those urging specific generative AI oversight, I would suggest taking a deep breath. I called Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of Brown University’s Center for Tech Responsibility and co-author of the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, and asked him if such rules were necessary, given how that technology has captured people’s imagination. “I would say that if we hold it to the same standards that you would hold any other (AI) system, it would not pass,” he told me. “If you have transparency or testing evaluation standards, it’s going to be harder to get ChatGPT-like systems to pass them.”
“If we focus on the point of impact, focus on where the systems are being used, and make sure we have governance in place there — just like we have wanted, all this time — then, automatically, generative AI systems will have to be subject to those same rules,” he added.
WHAT TO WATCH IN US DIGITAL POLICYMAKING
WHEN IT COMES TO WASHINGTON’S DIGITAL RULEMAKING, I’m usually a glass-half-empty kind of guy. And as U.S. lawmakers return this week after their Easter break, it’s hard not to look at the landscape and feel disappointed (again). The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (for digital competition) is going nowhere; the RESTRICT Act (for banning the likes of TikTok) is mostly a public relations stunt; and the American Data Privacy Act (for comprehensive federal data protection standards) is stuck in a political quagmire.
But, weirdly, I’m more optimistic about U.S. movements on digital than I have been for years. You just need to reshape your thinking about what policymaking actually looks like, and what the goals are. What’s clear — given a divided Congress and upcoming elections — is that any specific domestic legislation aimed at greater consumer rights or hobbling Big Tech is not going to happen. But if you reframe that to focus on national and economic security threats, of which the tech sector is critical, then there’s a lot happening — both domestically and within international circles.
It’s hard not to look past the $52 billion in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and research via last year’s CHIPS and Science Act. Already more than 200 companies have bid for some of that cash, with about $200 billion in overall spending already pledged for new American facilities. You could argue, though, that some of that cash would have been spent anyway. It’s an effort to ward off Chinese rivals eager to gobble up more market share in the global chip industry. The fact the U.S. Commerce Department specifically linked U.S. subsidies to commitments from companies not to invest in China over the next decade shows how blatant Washington is in its goals.
The same could be said for the Inflation Reduction Act and its similar financial incentives for domestic electric vehicle production. Sure, Beijing is a factor in trying to shore up local production — much to the ire of U.S. allies like the EU, Japan and South Korea. But Washington has figured out there’s a global technological race associated with these new forms of vehicles, and it’s willing to spend big to give its homegrown automakers a fighting chance of competing worldwide. If that’s not digital policymaking, I’m not sure what is.
Outside of the U.S., American policymakers are similarly flexing their digital muscles, mostly in the name of national security. Officials are still visiting national capitals across the West to warn about the threat that China poses, specifically related to semiconductors, telecommunications, global tech standards and cybersecurity threats. It’s a full-court press to convince somewhat skeptical allies there’s a choice to be made between allowing Beijing to promote itself globally or standing with Washington to push back against China’s ascendency.
That’s playing out in fora like the upcoming EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council where, again, U.S. officials are pushing their European counterparts to specifically name-check China in the summit’s communiqué — something Brussels is loath to do. Washington is also making its voice heard more loudly in international bodies like the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (where a U.S. citizen, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, is now secretary-general) and more industry-led bodies like those deciding on future telecom standards. Again, this is all about pushing back against China.
There’s also some old-school economic diplomacy at play. Even after the EU passed its new antitrust rules, known as the Digital Markets Act, U.S. Department of Commerce officials and those from the White House continue to complain to anyone who will listen in Brussels that the legislation, which will come into force next year, unfairly discriminates against Silicon Valley. Given ongoing domestic concerns about Big Tech’s role in society, many Americans may find it odd that — given all that’s going on right now — U.S. diplomats and officials are so intrinsically associated with the industry and its ongoing battle with foreign governments.
BY THE NUMBERS
GLOBAL PRIVACY BATTLE, ROUND TWO
IN CASE YOU WERE IN ANY DOUBT about the ongoing — but often hidden — fight between Brussels and Washington over privacy standards, a three-day summit in London this week laid it out for all to see. The so-called Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) Forum, a U.S.-led project to expand existing data rules associated with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a regional trade body, represents the latest American effort to tilt the scales in its favor. The plan is to create (voluntary) standards so that countries can allow local companies to move data freely between like-minded members. It’s a direct response to the existing status quo that gives Brussels, whose privacy rules are the de facto global playbook, almost exclusive rights to determine which governments have the same level of data protection rules to meet the bloc’s exacting standards.
Officials from APEC member countries, as well as those from the United Kingdom, Argentina, Nigeria and Bangladesh, spent three days hashing out specifics with industry players this week in a fancy London hotel. The CBPR regime involves a combination of national regulators and outside auditors determining if companies are sufficiently protecting people’s data when it’s shipped around the world. The talks focused on three areas: how to include new countries in the voluntary data-transfer pact (the U.K. applied to become an associate member); reforms to the underlying CBPR agreement that dates back almost two decades; and internal changes to the regime to make it more global than its current Asian focus.
WONK OF THE WEEK
FOR THIS WEEK, WE’RE BRAVING THE LATE SPRING WEATHER in Brussels to focus on Penelope Papandropoulos, who just became head of the data analysis and technology unit within the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (or DG COMP), the bloc’s antitrust regulator.
This is not Papandropoulos’ first go-around with digital competition. Until very recently, she was a close adviser to Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s digital and antitrust chief, and previously worked for her predecessor, Spain’s Joaquín Almunia. The Greek-born official holds a doctorate in economics from the Université libre de Bruxelles and previously ran the Brussels office of Charles River Associates, an antitrust-focused consultancy.
“After 4 fantastic years advising Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, I am going back to DG Comp to head the data analysis and technology unit that will report to the chief technology officer,” she wrote on LinkedIn. “Looking forward to the great challenge of supporting competition enforcement.”
THEY SAID WHAT, NOW?
“We won’t allow these groups to stay in the shadows. We’re shining a light on these threats because we need to work together to strengthen our defenses,” Oliver Dowden, the U.K.’s secretary of state in the country’s Cabinet Office, told an audience in Belfast when warning that Russian-affiliated groups were targeting critical infrastructure like the energy and telecom sectors across the West. “We have never publicly highlighted the threat from these kinds of groups attempting such attacks before and I should stress that we do not think that they currently have the capability to cause widespread damage to our infrastructure.”
WHAT I’M READING
— Google outlined a series of potential commitments related to giving others a greater ability to compete in in-app payments in response to a U.K. regulatory investigation into the tech company’s practices. More from the search giant here.
— The European Commission published draft guidelines on how it would implement the bloc’s new digital competition rulebook, known as the Digital Markets Act. For competition boffins, it’s a must (but very dry) read.
— The Polish national security agencies discovered a widespread digital spying operation conducted by the Russians against foreign ministries and diplomatic entities across NATO member countries, the EU and parts of Africa. Read more here.
— The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership has created a glossary of terms associated with how practices are implemented across the industry as part of a consultation to improve how trust and safety issues are incorporated into companies’ workflows. Take a look here.
— Academics created a “Sims”-style world populated with agents created via generative AI and these online actors displayed believable behaviors, including autonomously creating a Valentine’s Day party among themselves, according to research from the University of Stanford.
— Unauthorized disclosure of classified government documents violates Discord’s terms of service that prohibits the posting of illegal content on the platform, claims Clint Smith, the company’s chief legal officer, in a blog post responding to the recent Pentagon leaks.
politico.eu/newsletter/digital…
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