New EU rules would allow it to shut down AI before it got dangerous

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere: the rise of "thinking" machines has been one of the defining developments of the past two decades – and will only become more prominent as computing power increases. The European Union has been working on a framework to regulate AI for some time, starting way back in March 2018, as part of its broader Digital Decade regulations. Work on AI regulations has been relatively slow while the EU focuses on the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, which focus on reigning in the American tech giants, but the work definitely continues. Any worthwhile legislative process should be open to critique and analysis and the EU's AI Act is undergoing a thorough treatment by the UK-based Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research institution working on data policy. The full report (via TechCrunch) includes a lot of detail on the pros and cons of the regulation, which is a global first, with the main takeaway is that the EU is setting itself up to have some pretty powerful tools at its disposal.