Photo Credit: Kmeron for LeWeb11 / CC by 2.0
It’s time for European Union regulators to embrace open-source AI – at least according to Meta head Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who’ve laid out their position in a jointly penned article.
That approximately 1,000-word article was posted to the appropriate companies’ websites today after being published in the Economist earlier this week.
Though Ek’s decision to collaborate with Zuckerberg here is perhaps surprising – it was only last year that EU officials ordered Meta to pay a record fine – the Stockholm native couldn’t very well have done so with Spotify rival Apple.
To be sure, Apple is already facing an even larger EU fine specifically for “abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps,” besides grappling with different investigations yet.
And Google, despite having a seemingly positive overall relationship with Spotify, reportedly provides its custom microchips to Apple as part of the iPhone developer’s AI training processes.
In any event, it’s Zuckerberg and Ek who are entreating EU regulators and lawmakers to embrace open source, which they believe represents “the best shot at harnessing AI to drive progress and create economic opportunity and security for everyone.”
Meta currently “open-sources many of its AI technologies,” according to the execs, and Europe is said to be “particularly well placed to make the most of” open-source AI. But the continent’s “fragmented regulatory structure, riddled with inconsistent implementation, is hampering innovation and holding back developers,” per Ek and Zuckerberg.
“Instead of clear rules that inform and guide how companies do business across the continent,” the two spelled out in a Meta-specific section, “our industry faces overlapping regulations and inconsistent guidance on how to comply with them. Without urgent changes, European businesses, academics and others risk missing out on the next wave of technology investment and economic-growth opportunities.”
From there, the authors pointed to the perceived “uneven application” of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation measure and made a final push for “thoughtful, clear and consistent” AI guidelines.
While time will tell whether the publicly expressed position elicits changes in the EU – Ek, whose holdings (and AI stakes) now extend well beyond Spotify, certainly possesses considerable sway in this department – the higher-ups also mentioned possible advantages of open-source AI for their businesses.
With regard to Spotify, early AI investments laid the groundwork for personalization success and “made the company what it is today,” Daniel Ek wrote, emphasizing as well the “tremendous potential to use open-source AI to benefit the industry” moving forward.
This tremendous potential refers to helping “more artists get discovered,” per the text. Needless to say, Spotify’s interest in achieving a favorable AI regulatory environment hardly begins and ends with assisting artists.
However, the line does raise questions about AI’s ability to fuel additional discovery in the approaching years. On Spotify itself, offerings like AI DJ have been well-received as a whole, and tech undoubtedly drives a substantial amount of discovery on TikTok, for instance.
