Europe, a laggard in AI, seizes the lead in its regulation

TWO THINGS European lawmakers should get credit for are stamina and an extraordinary tolerance for bad food. Representatives of the EU Parliament, member governments and the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, spent nearly 40 hours in a dark meeting room in Brussels until the wee hours of December 9th hashing out a deal on the AI Act, Europe’s ground-breaking law on regulating artificial intelligence. Observers shared pictures online of half-eaten sandwiches and other fast food piling up in the venue’s rubbish bins to gauge the progress of the talks.

This ultramarathon of negotiation was the endpoint of one of the most diligent lawmaking processes ever. It started in early 2018 with lengthy public consultations and a weighty 52-person “High-Level Expert Group”, which in 2020 led to a white paper on which all could comment online (1,250 groups and individuals did so). The legislation has yet to be released because kinks still need to be worked out, but the draft version was a document of nearly 100 pages and almost as many articles.