Hacker News Reader

Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

The AI Act is hilarious. It makes emotion detection the highest level of risk—which makes any frontier model potentially in violation.

Most frontier models now allow you to take a picture of your face, assess your emotions and give advice — and that appears to be a direct violation.

https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/global/what-is-an-...

Just like the GDPR, there is no way to know for sure what is actually acceptable or not. Huge chilling effect though and a lot of time wasted on unnecessary compliance.

View on HN

You are referring to Article 5 1.f?

"1 The following AI practices shall be prohibited: (...)

"f) the placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of AI systems to infer emotions of a natural person in the areas of workplace and education institutions, except where the use of the AI system is intended to be put in place or into the market for medical or safety reasons"

See recital 44 for a rationale. [1] I don't think this is "hilarious". Seems a very reasonable, thoughtful restriction; which does not prevent usage for personal use or research purposes. What exactly is the problem with such legislation?

[1]: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/recital/44/

It effectively bans the educational use of ChatGPT and Claude because they can and do respond to the emotional expression of students. That’s what is hilarious! Do these tools actually violate the act? No one knows. It isn’t clear. Meanwhile, my university is worried enough to sit on their hands.

And this is the whole danger/challenge of the AI act. Of course it seems reasonable to forbid emotion detecting AI in the workplace — or it would 5 years ago when the ideas were discussed. But now that all major AI systems can detect emotions and infer intent (via paralinguistic features, not just a user stating their emotions) — this kind of precaution puts Europe strategically behind. It is very hard to be an AI company in Europe. The AI act does not appear to be beneficial for anyone—-except I’m sure that it will support regulatory capture by large firms.

Seems like you’re reading this rather broadly. Pathologically so.

An AI textbook QA tool may be able to infer emotions, but it’s not a function of that system.

> The AI act does not appear to be beneficial for anyone

It’s an attempt to be forward thinking. Imagine a fleet of emotionally abusive AI peers or administrators meant to shame students into studying more.

Hyperbolic example, sure, but that’s what the law seems to try and prevent

Calling me pathological doesn’t really strengthen the argument.

One can certainly imagine a textbook QA tool that doesn’t infer emotions. If one were introduced to the market with the ability to do so, it would seem to run afoul of the law, regardless of whether it was marketed as such.

The fact is that any textbook QA systems based on a current frontier model CAN infer emotions.

If they were so forward thinking, why ban emotion detection and not emotional abuse?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com