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Comment by BjoernKW | Hacker News Reader

> The AI Act is a big set of legislation which is interesting and impactful. Why would we not set dedicated time aside to talk about it?

Well, in other parts of the world you have people talking about progress and how to advance the human species while in the EU we have people talking about how to regulate every minute detail of human life. You can't get any more telling than that.

> I support GDPR and believe sometimes disruption is needed to safeguard individuals' interests.

GDPR has completely failed at that. Individuals' interests and privacy are worse off than they were before GDPR.

Small companies are burdened with byzantine rules that achieve nothing to improve users' privacy while the worst offenders - large conglomerates and authorities - simply don't care. The latter are largely exempt from GDPR anyway while the former have huge legal departments to deal with GDPR as they see fit.

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> Well, in other parts of the world you have people talking about progress and how to advance the human species while in the EU we have people talking about how to regulate every minute detail of human life. You can't get any more telling than that.

This is a kind of strange take. Do you think conference topics are mutually exclusive? I assure you no other conferences on a multitude of interesting subjects were harmed in the making of a one-day AI Act conference.

You're not really providing any concrete examples of GDPR failing, so there's not much there to respond to. I've used the right to erasure and right of access successfully and automatically opt out of trackers when browsing, which for me is a benefit.

> This is a kind of strange take. Do you think conference topics are mutually exclusive?

To some extent they are, yes.

First, it's about what people spend their time and focus on. If you're focussing on regulating, there's less time you can spend on innovating.

Then, some of that regulation actually precludes innovation in certain areas. So, by establishing the premise that regulation is justified by organising a conference on it, you're delegitimising discussion on the kind of innovation that regulation attempts to prevent.

> You're not really providing any concrete examples of GDPR failing, so there's not much there to respond to.

GDPR was - allegedly - targeted at the likes of Facebook or TikTok, which to my knowledge do very little to implement GDPR in a way that's conducive to user privacy.

At the same time, everyone running a tiny website has to put in enormous effort to implement that regulation, because otherwise authorities might come for them through ruinous fines.

Yes, this does happen, particularly because in some EU countries (Germany being the worst offender) it's so easy to impose fines on small businesses at scale, this literally has become a business model for authorities and law firms.

Regulation of harmful use cases of new technologies is very justified, as is understanding it. In the same city we've had plenty of conferences and lectures on AI innovations - some of those talks taking place during the AI Act conference itself.

I am very glad the rights GDPR gives me are applicable to more than just Facebook and TikTok.

It seems like our views on institutional actors' responsibilities to protect individuals' rights and interests are just inherently misaligned - as are our views on subjects worthy of organized discussion/exploration. Thanks for the interesting conversation!

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