THE BULLETIN
Coronation preparation
Members of the cavalry regiment of the British army prepare for an April 17 nighttime rehearsal for the coronation of King Charles III. The May 6 event is the U.K.’s first coronation in 70 years, and in addition to crowning Charles alongside his wife Camilla in a lavish ceremony, it will showcase British traditions the monarchy is meant to sustain.
EUROPEAN LAWMAKERS ARE putting the finishing touches on a set of wide-ranging rules designed to govern the use of artificial intelligence. If passed, those rules would make the E.U. the first major jurisdiction outside of China to pass targeted AI regulation. And tech companies are lobbying hard amid the battle over the scope of the rules.
SETTING THE BAR The E.U. Artificial Intelligence Act is likely to ban AI that ranks citizens based on their behavior and facial recognition in public. The rules could set a global standard, as companies may find it easier to comply with E.U. rules in all countries, rather than to build different products for different jurisdictions—a phenomenon known as the “Brussels effect.”
BIG TECH’S FIGHT One of the act’s most contentious points is whether so-called general-purpose AIs—like ChatGPT—should be considered high risk, and thus subject to the strictest rules. Lobbying against this possibility are Big Tech companies including Google and OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft, which have plowed billions of dollars into building general-purpose AIs and seek to benefit from licen
