A Glimmer of Hope in the EU?

Meta's strategy could provide additional muscle in the ongoing regulatory tug-of-war

I wonder how many EU citizens know that Brussels is doing a pretty good job of keeping advanced AI out of Europe. And I wonder whether they’re going to do anything about it.

Best as I can tell, two dynamics have traditionally insulated EU bureaucrats from the consequences of their anti-tech laws and enforcement:

(1) the difficulty of ordinary, voting Europeans to hold EU lawmakers electorally accountable for their policies, and

(2) US companies' strategy (that Meta seems to be having second thoughts about) of continuing to offer cool US tech into the EU, even with the specter of legal action and outsized fines.

On the first point: In the US, if the government prevented people from using tech they wanted, voters might choose to take out their frustration at the ballot box. Case in point: crypto. The crypto industry’s successes in the 2024 election cycle are a recent example.

But in the EU, no pro-tech/anti-regulation groundswell has yet materialized, and it’s interesting to consider why.

The main reason is structural. In the EU, an unelected, unaccountable body—the EU Commission—proposes legislation.  Sure, they consult with the EU Parliament, which is popularly elected, but the relationship between any unpopular initiative and one's own parliament member is distant and opaque, and turnout is low in those elections. 

This almost complete lack of popular accountability is not a recipe for voter-induced change, especially given the second dynamic: US tech companies have traditionally sold into EU and paid the crazy fines, as an unavoidable cost of doing business in a significant market.

But there is a new approach, exemplified by Meta’s decision not to offer Llama’s multi-modal model in the EU because of “the unpredictable nature of the regulatory environment”: withholding technology from Europe that EU bureaucrats will inevitably target. I believe this is good strategy. The old way, the burden fell exclusively on the company (which pays the fine). The new way, it also falls on the consumer (who doesn't get the tech). And that consumer has a vote. A distant, attenuated vote, to be sure, but a vote nonetheless.

Meta’s emerging strategy has a chance of increasing the political pressure on the EU to legislate in a more consumer-friendly way.  When EU citizens go without tech that they want or need, at some point, they may look at the technological backwardness that their leaders caused, and act.