The golden rule of government is that whenever something new emerges – regulate it even when you do not understand what you are doing. While the details are not yet set, the EU wants to be the first to regulate AI. This new legislation requires foundation models such as ChatGPT and general-purpose AI systems (GPAI) to comply with transparency obligations before they are put on the market. These include drawing up technical documentation, complying with EU copyright law, and disseminating detailed summaries about the content used for training.

The real problem is what is AI? I can write a program that will talk, mimic a human, list all the known diseases in a database, then you answer some questions and it will say you have this or that. That is not AI. That is just a look-up program. How do we even define AI? I fear that they will simply take a look-up program and attribute that to AI. The regulation will become such a nightmare that you cannot participate in such a marketplace.

The EU legislation stands a high probability of killing AI development in Europe and, in fact, closing off its citizens from even using AI. The classic example is how England lost the Industrial Revolution and effectively outlawed automobiles, so the Industrial Revolution shifted to America. That one decision led to England’s subservient status to America.

The English politicians were bribed by the horse & buggy industry to pass the Locomotive Act (1865), which required self-propelled vehicles (automobiles) on public roads to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn. The legislation succeeded in shifting the Industrial Revolution to Germany and America. The status quo bribed the politicians fighting against this wave of Creative Destruction. The English Parliament finally removed the need for the red flag in 1878 and abolished the law entirely in 1896.

The Hedge Fund Industry was created by overregulation. In 1985, I warned Congress that unless they merged the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, they would force serious fund management offshore, which became the hedge fund industry. They would not merge the two agencies, so managing funds for an American became impossible. I was offered to manage $60 billion domestically and declined. Why? Because by law, the maximum I could hedge if I thought the stock market would decline was 17% using futures. If I used more than the equivalent of 17%, I would not be an equity fund regulated by the SEC but a futures fund under the CFTC. If you obey the laws of one, you go to jail under the other. Hence, you had to go offshore. For an American to invest in a hedge fund offshore, they must create a corporation outside the USA and that invests – not an American citizen. Then the IRS snoops around.

Domestically, there are countless funds that are all specialized. It became your burden to understand if you should be in bonds, stocks, real estate, or commodities. Each fund will naturally tell you they are the best. As a hedge fund manager, clients came to me, and I made that decision, which I could not do in a domestic fund because of all the regulations.

With some of the suggestions already being mentioned in the EU, the drastic overregulation will more likely than not mean AI can never be developed in Europe, and we may be looking at the same outcome as England’s Red Flag legislation of 1865.