Prince Constantijn is the special envoy of Techleap, a Dutch startup accelerator.
Patricio Van Katwijk | fake images
Prince Constantijn is the third and youngest son of the former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the younger brother of Dutch King Willem-Alexander.
He is a special envoy of the Dutch startup accelerator Techleap, where he works to help local startups grow rapidly internationally by improving their access to capital, market, talent and technologies.
“We’ve seen this in the data space. [with GDPR]”We’ve seen this now in the platform space and now with the AI space,” Constantijn added.
European Union regulators have taken a strict approach to artificial intelligence, with formal regulations limiting how developers and companies can apply the technology in certain scenarios.
The bloc gave final approval to the EU AI Law, a groundbreaking law on AI, last month.
Officials are concerned about how quickly technology is advancing and the risks it poses around job displacement, privacy and algorithmic bias.
The law takes a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence, meaning that different applications of the technology are treated differently depending on their level of risk.
For generative AI applications, the EU AI Law sets out clear transparency requirements and copyright rules.
All generative AI systems should make it possible to prevent illegal production, disclose whether content is produced by AI, and publish summaries of copyrighted data used for training purposes.
But the EU AI Law requires even stricter scrutiny for high-impact, general-purpose AI models that could pose a “systemic risk”, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, including extensive assessments and mandatory reporting of any “serious incident.”
Prince Constantine said he is “really concerned” that Europe has focused more on regulating AI than trying to become an innovative leader in that space.
“It’s good to have barriers. We want to bring clarity to the market, predictability and all that,” he told CNBC earlier this month on the sidelines of Money 20/20. “But it’s very difficult to do that in a space that changes so quickly.”
“There are big risks if you get it wrong and, as we have seen with genetically modified organisms, this has not stopped its development. It just stopped Europe from developing it, and now we are consumers of the product, rather than producers capable of producing it.” influence the market as it develops.
Between 1994 and 2004, the EU had imposed an effective moratorium on new approvals of genetically modified crops because of the perceived health risks associated with them.
The bloc later developed strict rules for GMOs, citing the need to protect citizens’ health and the environment. The US National Academies of Sciences says genetically modified crops are safe for both human consumption and the environment.
Constantijn added that Europe is finding it “quite difficult” to innovate in AI due to “huge data constraints,” particularly when it comes to sectors such as healthcare and medical sciences.
Additionally, the U.S. market is “a much larger, unified market” with greater capital flow, Constantijn said. On these points, he added, “Europe scores quite poorly.”
“I think where we get good results is in talent,” he said. “We have a good score on technology itself.”
Moreover, when it comes to developing applications that use AI, “Europe will definitely be competitive,” Constantijn noted. However, he added that “the underlying data infrastructure and IT infrastructure is something we will continue to rely on the big platforms to provide us with.”
