Prince Constantijn is a special envoy for Techleap, a Dutch startup accelerator.
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AMSTERDAM — Europe risks falling behind the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence as it focuses on regulating the technology, Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands said.
“Our ambition seems to be limited to being good regulators,” Constantijn told CNBC earlier this month in an interview on the sidelines of the Money 20/20 fintech conference in Amsterdam.
Prince Constantijn is the third and youngest son of the former Dutch Queen Beatrix and the younger brother of the reigning Dutch King Willem-Alexander.
He is a special envoy of the Dutch startup accelerator Techleap, where he helps local startups grow rapidly internationally by improving their access to capital, market, talent and technologies.
“We've seen this in the data space [with GDPR]We've seen this now in the platform space, and now with the AI space,” Constantijn added.
Regulators in the European Union are taking a strict approach to artificial intelligence. There are formal rules that restrict how developers and companies can apply the technology in certain scenarios.
The bloc last month gave final approval to the EU AI Act, a landmark AI law.
Officials are concerned about the speed at which the technology is developing and the risks it poses in terms of job displacement, privacy and algorithmic bias.
The law takes a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence. This means that different applications of the technology are treated differently depending on their level of risk.
For generative AI applications, the EU AI Act contains clear transparency requirements and copyright rules.
All generative AI systems should make it possible to prevent illegal production, disclose whether content is produced by AI, and publish summaries of the copyrighted data used for training purposes.
But the EU's AI Act requires even stricter oversight of high-impact, general-purpose AI models that could pose a “systemic risk,” such as OpenAI's GPT-4 – including thorough reviews and mandatory reporting of “serious incidents.”
Prince Constantijn said he is “really concerned” that Europe's focus is more on regulating AI than on trying to become a leader in innovating in the space.
“It's good to have guardrails. We want to bring clarity to the market, predictability and things like that,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of Money 20/20 earlier this month. “But it's very difficult to do that in such a rapidly changing space.”
“There are big risks associated with doing it wrong, and as we have seen with genetically modified organisms, this has not stopped development. It has only stopped Europe from developing it, and now we are consumers of the product, instead from producers who are able to develop the product.” influence the market as it develops.”
Between 1994 and 2004, the EU had placed an effective moratorium on new approvals of genetically modified crops due to the perceived health risks associated with them.
The bloc subsequently developed strict regulations on GMOs, citing the need to protect citizens' health and the environment. The US National Academies of Sciences says that genetically modified crops are safe for both human consumption and the environment.
Constantijn added that Europe is making it “quite difficult” for itself to innovate in AI due to “major limitations on data,” especially when it comes to sectors such as healthcare and medical science.
Moreover, the US market is “a much larger and unified market” with more free-flowing capital, Constantijn said. On these points, he added: “Europe scores quite poorly.”
“Where we score well, I think, is on talent,” he said. “We score well on the technology itself.”
And when it comes to developing applications that use AI, “Europe will definitely be competitive,” Constantijn said. Nevertheless, he added that “the underlying data infrastructure and IT infrastructure is something that we will continue to rely on the delivery of by large platforms.”
