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EU Orders Google to Give Rival AI Apps the Same Android Access as Gemini

jole said:
Agreed. What should be done with them?

One argument is that everyone should be free to do self-harm. Lets have assault rifles and meth freely available for sale at grocery stores. (USA sadly is already almost there with gun sales)

Another argument is the opposite: People need to be protected from themselves. Lets not allow selling beer after 10pm and only allow a selling wine in a government monopoly with mission to not sell anyone who might be alcoholic. (Finland has been on this path for decades and is achieving nothing)

I think neither works.
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I wish I had any good ideas to share!
 
jole said:
One argument is that everyone should be free to do self-harm. [...]
Another argument is the opposite: People need to be protected from themselves.
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As I recently argued in another thread, I believe there is a middle ground.

You should inform people. Teach them, warn them.
You can "nudge" people to follow the "right* path": higher taxes on tobacco, lower taxes on healthy food, fines for driving to fast.
You can "nudge" companies to follow the "right* path": sugar tax in the UK, higher fines for unfair market practices, subsidies for healthier ingredients.
There is no need to outright ban salt, fat, alcohol. Make sure, REALLY sure, that people are aware of the consequences of their actions. There will always be a few that will act like teenagers and do the exact opposite of what is good* for them, but a lot of people will react the right* way.

Smoking in Germany is declining, the obesity numbers in UK are starting to decline, number of traffic fatalities in cities with speed limits is falling. All without banning tobacco, sugar or cars. Just by encouraging the right* behaviour.

* : I am aware that deciding what is "right" is a whoooooole other thing. That's a can of worms I'm not opening tonight anymore. 🙂
 
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tonmischa said:
As I recently argued in another thread, I believe there is a middle ground.

You should inform people. Teach them, warn them.
You can "nudge" people to follow the "right* path": higher taxes on tobacco, lower taxes on healthy food, fines for driving to fast.
You can "nudge" companies to follow the "right* path": sugar tax in the UK, higher fines for unfair market practices, subsidies for healthier ingredients.
There is no need to outright ban salt, fat, alcohol. Make sure, REALLY sure, that people are aware of the consequences of their actions. There will always be a few that will act like teenagers and do the exact opposite of what is good* for them, but a lot of people will react the right* way.

Smoking in Germany is declining, the obesity numbers in UK are starting to decline, number of traffic fatalities in cities with speed limits is falling. All without banning tobacco, sugar or cars. Just by rewarding the right* behaviour.

* : I am aware that deciding what is "right" is a whoooooole other thing. That's a can of worms I'm not opening tonight anymore. 🙂
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I think tobacco is a good analogy:
  • Tobacco is clearly harmful for the user — sharing users private data with Meta or a similar player whose business is selling users profile to advertisers is clearly harmful to the user
  • Tobacco can have irreversible consequences (lung cancer) — Leaking the data to a Chinese company will be once and done; the user cannot undo the harm
  • Tobacco can have negative impact to society beyond the user (other taxpayers end up paying for users chemotherapy) — Leaking a sizeable share of EU population's private data to CCP controlled AI provider can have national security implications.
Getting population at large to understand downsides of tobacco took decades. And legally forcing vendors to cover half of the product with warnings.

I am afraid that:
  • Legislation will do the opposite of requiring warnings. This time it is more likely to mandate no warnings due to them putting AI companies in competitive disadvantage.
  • There will again need to be decades of harm to the population until the population learns the consequences.
 
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Good up to a point though I'd want to make sure they're applying the same basic standard to Google as to Apple. While the compliance issues aren't identical, it seems to me Google is getting quite a bit of time to comply.
jole said:
Most users have no idea what giving access to your phone to OpenAI, Anthropic, Moonshot, SpaceXai, Meta, or Zai will mean to their privacy. Almost no-one will read lengthy terms of service. Likely some of these AI providers will act ethically and not immediately go and download all your private data to use it to profile you or train their models.

Many users will choose a "free" AI provider. Users are the product, not the AI service.

Many of the top AI providers are ultimately controlled by CCP. Having millions of EU citizens data being collected and forever stored by CCP intelligence apparatus might not be in the best interest of EU, but will absolutely happen as a side-effect of this legislation if Apple or Google give the requested access.
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So this is a much more interesting argument than most on this thread. Regulators very often don't think as much as they should about second order effects like this, the proverbial "unintended consequence" and the like, and it's good to see someone talking about it.
 
WinstonSmyth said:
What if both Apple and Android pulled out of the EU. Let everyone there use Nokia flip phones that Brussels can regulate.
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Oh, I would like sooo much going back to a computer, musu.bi notebook, Conid fountain pen and a disk-dial-landline-phone. Those where the days.

mwhite said:
They're seemingly incapable.
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One hit on a button in the Netherlands-Europe (just a tiny 18mln peeps country) and not a single decent chip is made anywhere world wide. They control 100% of all the faster chips naar world wide. ASML.
Thee are 100’s of companies needed and several of them are a chokehold, all over the world. There is no great America that has everything. Without TSMC, without Foxconn, without… no phone, iPad, or any better Android phone is being produced.


And you can argue all you want, but living in the EU gives you a better health, better accessible health care, better education on average, better protection from harmful food additives, better consumer rights and better privacy rights then anywhere in the world.
And all of that with several countries that just joint the bloc. That have been long under Sovjet control, that are redefining themselves, that are coming from economic difficult histories.

Yelp all you want, but when was the last time the US successfully brought a country to a democratic regime change or improved the democratic rule in a country? Gave people in other countries (or for the sake of it, in the US?!?) a better government, improved health of those citizens?
Perhaps the Second World War, and that was with Australians, Canadian, British and several others.
The US has been spitting their “friends“ a lot in the face, lately. And if the US don’t want to align with the EU or other countries, fine, that’s your choice to make. But don’t complain about the choices we make and don’t complain when the EU builds better relations with China, forges strong bonds with Canada, UK, Australia and many Asian countries that are much more reliable then the US has been.
Or would you like to discuss the behaviour of the utterly unreliable partner the US had been just in the last year? From import taxes that changed daily to the president that would never start a war but still is dropping a lot of bombs on Iran?

/r
 
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I consent, choose to, and pay for a product that has a walled garden AI. Can I still get that feature? Or is the EU going to step in tell me "we know better"?
 
danskin said:
I consent, choose to, and pay for a product that has a walled garden AI. Can I still get that feature? Or is the EU going to step in tell me "we know better"?
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No, you can just use the apple standard Siri /AI, or no AI at all, just like apple gives you now. But Apple wouldn’t be allowed to keep every other AI out. Apple can set standards, they still can set rules, but not blanket deny access to all.
It would be much like the Apple App Store. I’m allowed to use apps not from Apple Store, but I choose not too.
 
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