Regulatory Watch – May 2024

US plans to help connect 80 per cent of Africa

US Vice President Kamala Harris has announced the formation of a new partnership to help provide internet access to 80 per cent of Africa by 2030, up from 40 per cent now. It’s understood that Harris is keen to follow through on commitments she made to promote digital innovation when she visited Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia last year. The Partnership for Digital Access in Africa brings together private and public sector leaders from Africa, the United States and other parts of the world. Africa has struggled to receive the capital needed for its technology sector, with foreign direct investment falling to $45 billion in 2022, from $80 billion in 2021.

Large language models ‘will not reach human intelligence’

Artificial intelligence powered by large language models will never achieve the ability to reason and plan like humans, according to Meta’s chief AI scientist. In an interview in the Financial Times, Yann LeCun said LLMs powering products like ChatGPT had  ‘very limited understanding of logic’ and should not be relied on since their dependence on training data made them ‘intrinsically unsafe’. He said his team are working on a new generation of ‘world modelling’ AI systems to create superintelligence, though he conceded this vision could take 10 years to achieve.

Microsoft unbundles Teams globally to avert antitrust concerns

Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally, extending its previous announcement that unbundled the product in Europe. The initial decision was the result of antitrust issues raised by the EU. The European Commission had been investigating Microsoft’s tying of Office and Teams since 2020 following a complaint from a competitor, Slack. Microsoft said that, as well as addressing concerns raised by the Commission, the decision would provide multinational companies with ‘more flexibility when they want to standardise their purchasing across geographies’.

EU approves Act designed to increase domestic green tech production

The Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) will enter force in July following its approval by European Union governments. The law is designed to increase the production of green technology in Europe by helping European industry compete with US and Chinese rivals. The NZIA proposes streamlining the granting of permits and will require public bodies buying clean tech products to base their decisions not just on price, but with a 30 per cent weighting on an offer’s sustainability and supply resilience. The bloc has set a target of producing 40 per cent of green technology products domestically by 2030. The Act is seen as a response to China’s dominance in the sector, and to the US Inflation Reduction Act.

 AI is more hyped than used but people are optimistic, finds study

For all the money and attention given to generative AI, it is yet to become part of people’s routine internet use. This is one of the main findings of new research conducted in six countries by the Reuters Institute and Oxford University. The study found that ChatGPT was the most widely recognised AI product. However only 1 per cent of those surveyed in Japan used it on a daily basis, 2 per cent in France and the UK, and 7 per cent in the US. 56 per cent of 18-24 year olds had used it at least once. Across the sample there was optimism that AI would provide improvements in science, healthcare, media and entertainment, but pessimism around the impact on jobs and news. The full report can be read here.

Sources:  The Financial Times, APNews, Euronews, CNN,  TechCrunch, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg, Economic Times, Ars Technica, Reuters, BBC, Politico, Telecoms.com