Prince Constantijn is the special ambassador of the Dutch startup accelerator Teklap.
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Prince Constantijn is the third and youngest son of former Dutch Queen Beatrix and the younger brother of the reigning Dutch King Willem-Alexander.
He is the exclusive ambassador of the Dutch startup accelerator Techleap, where he helps local startups grow faster internationally by improving access to capital, markets, talent and technology.
“We've seen this in the data space. [with GDPR]we've seen it now in the platform space, and now with the AI space,” added Constantijn.
EU regulators have taken a tougher approach to artificial intelligence, with formal regulations limiting how developers and companies can apply the technology in certain situations.
The bloc last month gave final approval to the EU AI Act, a ground-breaking AI law.
Officials worry about how fast technology is advancing and the risks it poses about job displacement, privacy, and algorithmic bias.
The law takes a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence, meaning that different applications of the tech are viewed differently depending on their level of risk.
For generative AI applications, the EU AI Act sets clear transparency requirements and copyright rules.
All creative AI systems will have to make it possible to prevent illegal output, to show whether content has been generated by AI and to publish summaries of copyrighted data used for training purposes.
But the EU's Ai Act requires even stricter scrutiny for high-impact, general-purpose AI models that could pose “systemic risk,” such as OpenAI's GPT-4 — including full reporting of any “serious incidents.” Testing and mandatory reporting.
Prince Constantijn said he was “really concerned” that Europe was more focused on regulating AI than trying to be an innovation leader in the space.
“It's good to have guardrails. We want to bring clarity, predictability and all that to the market,” he told CNBC earlier this month on the sidelines of Money 20/20. “But it's very difficult to do that in such a fast-paced space.”
“There are big risks in getting it wrong, and as we've seen with genetically modified organisms, it hasn't stopped development. It's just stopped Europe from developing it, and now we have the product. are consumers, rather than capable producers. As it develops, it affects the market.”
Between 1994 and 2004, the European Union imposed an effective moratorium on new approvals of genetically modified crops due to the health risks associated with them.
The bloc then enacted stricter rules for GMOs, citing the need to protect citizens' health and the environment. The US National Academies of Sciences says genetically modified crops are safe for both human consumption and the environment.
Constantijn added that Europe is making it “quite difficult” to innovate in AI due to “huge restrictions on data”, especially when it comes to areas such as health and medical sciences.
Additionally, the US market is “a much larger and more unified market” with more free capital, Constantijn said. On these points, he added, “Europe's score is pretty bad.”
“Where we score well, I think is on talent,” he said. “We score well on technology itself.”
Also, when it comes to developing applications that use AI, “Europe is definitely going to be competitive,” Constantijn noted. Yet he added that “the underlying data infrastructure and IT infrastructure is something that we will continue to rely on large platforms to provide.”