EUs

Following marathon discussions last week, the European Union has secured a tentative agreement on the terms of the AI Act, bringing the landmark regulation closer to enactment. While missing the original deadline for Wednesday, lawmakers managed to thrash out a deal late on Friday, just in time for the weekend. If they had not, the law would have been delayed until next year, potentially after the EU-wide elections in June. It has not been easy trying to hit a moving target. Billed as the…

Following marathon talks between European Union lawmakers and member states since Wednesday, the EU has reached a landmark agreement to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). This agreement will lay down provisional rules for the use of AI across the EU. Here’s an explainer.What is the EU agreement and why is it significant?The EU on Friday came to a political agreement on the rules for governing AI, bringing it closer to being the first major global power to establish enforceable AI legislation.Elevate Your Tech Prowess…

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. This week, Google flooded the channels with announcements around Gemini, its new flagship multimodal AI model. Turns out it’s not as impressive as the company initially made it out to be — or, rather, the “lite” version of the model (Gemini Pro) Google released this week…

A third day of negotiations on Friday over landmark European Union rules governing the use of artificial intelligence will focus on military and security applications, with governments seeking to persuade lawmakers not to impose an outright ban. Exhausted EU lawmakers and governments clinched a provisional deal on Thursday on another highly contentious issue, how to regulate AI systems like ChatGPT, after a nearly 24-hour debate. Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian…

Apple has joined Meta and TikTok owner ByteDance in contesting their platforms’ definitions as part of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The legislation allows regulators to designate dominant companies’ services or platforms as “gatekeepers,” or big and powerful enough to act as a bottleneck between businesses and customers, which it can then fine for prohibited behavior. It currently targets 22 gatekeeper services run by six Big Tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon and ByteDance’s TikTok).…

More than a dozen of the world's biggest tech companies face unprecedented legal scrutiny, as the European Union's sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes new rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency this month.Across the EU, a host of internet giants – including Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms, Chinese-owned video app TikTok and a handful of Google services – are adapting to the new obligations, including preventing harmful content from spreading, banning or limiting certain user-targeting…

Photo: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto (Getty Images)Apple will dispute the European Union’s latest crackdown on Big Tech by appealing the decision to regulate iMessage and the App Store as anticompetitive services, according to Bloomberg.The M3 MacBook Pro: Made Dark for HalloweenApple is one of six companies targeted by European regulators under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which claims Big Tech has several gatekeeping services that stifle competition and should be broken up. Apple has reportedly drafted an appeal to the DMA,…

Screenshot: LucasfilmBut just as EU fans can be overjoyed at the E-Wing’s return to mainstream Star Wars prominence, questions remain as to just how long that prominence will last. After all, by necessity of Ahsoka’s place in the timeline, we know the E-Wing is not bound to be around for all that long. In the material from this period of the Star Wars timeline so far, the X-Wing has remained the primary starfighter of what little we’ve seen of the New Republic. Official novels set across the 30-year period between Return…

EU has urged the US to join efforts in regulating AI to safeguard global interests; Israel has covertly integrated AI systems into its military operations; Shashi Tharoor highlights AI's impact on jobs, this and more in our daily AI roundup. Let us take a look.1. EU urges US to join efforts in regulating AI to safeguard global interestThe EU's Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, is urging the US to take action in regulating AI, according to the Wired reports. Reynders, responsible for crafting and enforcing laws…

Amazon’s planned acquisition of iRobot is now under in-depth antitrust scrutiny in the European Union. The $1.7BN deal for the ecommerce behemoth to pick up the robot vacuum maker, announced just under a year ago, was cleared by competition regulators in the UK last month. But EU regulators are now stepping in for their own close sweep. In a press release put out yesterday evening, the Commission said it’s concerned the transaction would allow Amazon to restrict competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners…