AIFA president interviewed by FT’s Sifted on UK vs EU AI regulation

Following a "super week" for AI in the UK, AIFA president Roeland Decorte was asked by The Financial Times' Sifted what makes the UK attractive to AI startups like those represented by AIFA, particularly against the up and coming status of Paris as an AI hub. Sifted's Tim Smith was particularly interested in what role Brexit had played.

And indeed, the EU AI Act, as we await its implementation in 24 months, creates uncertainty for many startups - whether they are based in, or just seeking to deal with (even indirectly) clients in EU member states.

Take, for example, the already heavily regulated medtech AI space. It is still unclear whether existing regulatory, medical and safety classifications of AI, and the regulatory risk classification of AI as instituted by the Act, will merge or remain as two separate costly regulatory tracks that every EU-based company, and all those dealing with the EU, will have to navigate (and pay for) simultaneously.

While, hopefully, by the time of the Act's implementation these two tracks will be harmonised, at present the lack of clarity creates uncertainty.

The regulatory costs would likely be too high for any EU startups and any startups wanting to deal with the EU to be able to bear (especially in the early stages). Such a scenario, where startups are priced out due to two sets of regulatory consultants, two sets of regulatory paperwork, and so forth, would only benefit the largest players, enabling the very monopolies the EU aims to avoid through the AI Act. AIFA president Roeland Decorte has previously written on Op-Ed on this topic in UKTN.

The UK's choice to take a more balanced, "slow but determined" approach, avoiding regulating "the short term", but nevertheless putting appropriate safeguards in place to monitor and build up a safe AI environment, is encouraging, and will, we hope, be picked up by the successive government.

Next to the obvious linguistic and cultural aspects, it seems likely that the EU AI Act played a significant role in the decision of Scale AI and CoreWeave to choose London for their European HQ.

Read the interview with Decorte on Sifted here: https://sifted.eu/articles/ai-uk-brexit-liverpool-coreweave