Adrian Weckler

You know, or it has decided, it's looked at the figures and decided that, well, actually, you know, people of this age category or of this gender or from this area or who are from this educational background, they are statistically less likely to succeed.

So therefore, we're going to rule them out, you know?

Yeah, and we've seen it with banks and loans as well.

Before the current news cycle of AI and AI systems arose a few years ago, when particularly US banks started experimenting with tech systems and sort of quasi-AI systems,

They started finding that people who said that put their address down as from a certain area in Los Angeles or big cities were finding that they weren't getting a mortgage or maybe they weren't being seen, say, for an interview to rent an apartment based on the likelihood that if they were from that area, they were probably black.

And there probably are people on the other side of the argument, the kind of the libertarian tech argument, who will say, look, it's a hard, cruel world.

companies should be allowed to decide anything they want, including not hiring people if they're older or if they're from a certain educational background.

After all, they screen, they require for master's degrees, they rate some universities higher than other universities.

But I think the EU's AI Act

is an attempt for us to try and agree a certain amount of common base rules that, you know, that we can all agree that yes, we live in a capitalist society and yes, you know,

We want the best to thrive, but at the same time, everybody should have a chance.

Why do you think we take it more seriously in Europe than they do in the States?

Yeah, because when I bring this sort of stuff up, I go up to the States fairly regularly.

I was over there last week.

And when I bring this kind of stuff up with counterparts in the US, anyone who works for a tech company, I can see their brows starting to furrow and their lips starting to furrow.

And it's not quite a sneer, but they start to... And then the inevitable comes out.

And they start to talk about European socialism.

And then the next thing out of their mouth, usually, is the outcome of that.

And what they will say is, your intentions are good, but your outcomes are bad.

And they will list off GDP growth rates.