How is the AI Industry Developing? The World's First AI Act is Coming, EU Negotiations Make Major Progress
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This June, the European Parliament passed the draft authorization of the 'Artificial Intelligence Act.' Subsequently, EU member states, the European Parliament, and the European Commission conducted multiple tripartite negotiations to determine the final version of the bill.
During this period, disagreements persisted among the parties regarding issues such as how to regulate generative AI models like ChatGPT, whether AI can be used in biometric surveillance, and the regulatory model to adopt. Now, the bill faces its 'ultimate test.'
The World's First AI Act is Coming, EU Negotiations Make Major Progress
Early Thursday local time, sources revealed that after months of negotiations, EU parties have largely reached an agreement on comprehensive rules for AI regulation, paving the way for the formal enactment of the 'Artificial Intelligence Act.' Once officially legislated, this bill will become the world's first comprehensive legislation in the field of artificial intelligence and a significant milestone in global AI regulation.
The current negotiation session marks the fifth tripartite meeting on the 'Artificial Intelligence Act.' According to insiders, on Wednesday afternoon local time, after several hours of discussions, tripartite negotiators from the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the 27 member states finally reached a compromise, agreeing to impose a series of controls on generative AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.
Bloomberg reported that this agreement signifies a crucial step forward for the EU in AI regulation. With no action taken by the United States, this bill could set the tone for the regulation of generative AI tools in developed countries. However, some warn that even with an agreement in place, further meetings may be required to finalize the technical details of the regulations, and the bill may not come into effect until 2026 at the earliest.
A key point of contention in the talks was the regulation of foundational models. France, Germany, and Italy advocated excluding this technology from regulation, favoring industry self-regulation instead. 'Internal divisions could jeopardize this bill, which has been years in the making,' reported The Washington Post. Several countries argued that the bill might stifle innovation and further lag Europe behind the U.S. in the race to develop such technologies.
Another controversial issue was remote biometric surveillance, particularly facial recognition using public camera data. Lawmakers sought to ban the use of AI in biometric surveillance, while governments wanted exceptions for national security, defense, and military purposes.
The global distribution of AI companies is highly uneven, primarily concentrated in a few countries and regions such as the U.S., Europe, and China. The top three locations—San Francisco/Bay Area, New York in the U.S., and Beijing in China—account for 16.9%, 4.8%, and 4.0% of global AI companies, respectively.
In terms of growth rate, the overall trend has been consistently upward until a slight decline in 2015. In Europe, AI enterprises are predominantly concentrated in the capital cities of their respective countries. Among European cities, London has the highest number of enterprises, 3.1 times that of Paris, the second-ranked city, accounting for 3.69% of the global total. The number of enterprises in Japan and South Korea is significantly lower than in China, with Tokyo comparable to Hangzhou and Seoul comparable to Chengdu. The top three cities in East Asia—Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen—account for 7.4% of the global total. Although still far behind the United States, their global significance is becoming increasingly evident.
How is the AI industry developing?
As the core driving force of the new wave of industrial transformation, artificial intelligence has become a new focal point of international competition and a new engine for economic development. Currently, AI is accelerating its deep integration with the real economy, facilitating industrial transformation and upgrading. After years of sustained accumulation, China has made significant progress in the field of AI, with theories and technologies becoming increasingly mature, applications expanding continuously, and corresponding business models evolving. In 2020, the core AI industry in China reached a scale of 303.1 billion yuan. AI is now rapidly integrating with various sectors of the real economy, driving industrial transformation, upgrading, and efficiency improvements.
The industrial landscape of China's AI sector is not yet mature, with substantial development potential in the upstream, midstream, and downstream segments. The AI industry chain is clearly defined, comprising the foundational layer, the technological layer, and the application layer. The foundational layer supports the in-depth development of AI through data or computing power, involving components such as sensors, chips, and cloud computing, which primarily handle data collection and processing.
Since the introduction of the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan on July 8, 2017, with active responses from industry, academia, and the government, the AI technology industry has entered a phase of rapid development. As the engine of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the growth of the AI technology industry will become a key driver for national and regional economic transformation and upgrading.
With new breakthroughs in scientific foundations and implementation platforms, emerging technologies such as brain-inspired computing, deep learning, and reinforcement learning signal the growth of intrinsic momentum, indicating that AI development has entered a new stage.
In recent years, China has introduced multiple policies on next-generation AI, leading to a development pattern where leading regions drive growth while others flourish. China's AI sector is moving toward large-scale implementation. The eastern region of China is particularly strong in AI development, forming three major industrial clusters centered around Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta, and Guangdong. Currently, China's next-generation AI open innovation platforms are supported by companies such as Baidu, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent, iFlytek, and SenseTime, focusing on autonomous driving, city brains, medical imaging, intelligent speech, and intelligent vision, respectively.
With the support of industrial policies and gradually improving market legislation, China's artificial intelligence market is expected to experience rapid growth in the future, projected to exceed 300 billion yuan by 2025. As the world's largest artificial intelligence application market, China has witnessed rapid implementation of AI technologies, which have been widely adopted across multiple industries and scenarios. The rapid development of artificial intelligence in China is stimulating economic growth across various sectors, demonstrating enormous potential in the application market.
The current AI industry still faces six major challenges: There remains a disconnect between cutting-edge research and industrial practice; a severe talent shortage persists; data silos and fragmentation issues are prominent; reusable and standardized technical frameworks, platforms, tools, and services are not yet mature; some sectors experience premature development and blind investment; and entrepreneurship faces relatively high barriers, with early-stage startups needing more support. Among these, the talent shortage is particularly acute. In the U.S., over half of data scientists have more than 10 years of work experience, while in China, 40% of researchers have less than five years of experience. Currently, China has fewer than 30 university research laboratories dedicated to artificial intelligence.
As artificial intelligence technology continues to mature, an increasing number of robots or intelligent programs will serve as human assistants, helping people complete repetitive or dangerous tasks. However, with the advancement and widespread application of AI technology, people may face growing challenges in security, privacy, and ethics. Currently, the application of artificial intelligence across various industries is gradually entering a phase of specialized deep integration, facing challenges in technical specialization, ecological development, and regulatory standardization.