AI regulations: What can the EU learn from Asia?
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has agreed on guidance regulating the use of artificial intelligence. Could it set the standard for more competitive practices in the EU?
Southeast Asia has published its long-awaited artificial intelligence (AI) governance and ethics guidelines that map out a voluntary and light-touch vision of how national governments can constrain the worst aspects of this new technology yet profit economically from its advance.
The ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to the guidelines, which were first drafted last year, at the 4th ASEAN Digital Ministers' Meeting in Singapore earlier this month.
Southeast Asia's more business-friendly approach to AI regulation could cause some upset within the European Union (EU). The bloc has been lobbying for other parts of the world to align with its own stricter proposed framework, the AI Act, which Brussels has dubbed the world's first comprehensive AI law.
EU officials were sent to a dozen Asian countries, including Singapore and the Philippines, last summer to convince national governments to back its more strident AI rules, which will force companies to disclose whether they have used AI-generated content, ensure safeguards against illegal content and impose financial penalties for rules violations, Reuters reported last year.
