Decorte CEO Interview on UK AI boom/EU AI Act in Financial Times’ Sifted

Following a "super week" for AI in the UK, Decorte CEO and Founder Roeland was asked by The Financial Times' Sifted what makes the UK attractive to AI startups like Decorte, especially in contrast to the EU.

Sifted's Tim Smith was particularly interested in what role Brexit had played.

Read the interview on Sifted here: https://sifted.eu/articles/ai-uk-brexit-liverpool-coreweave

In his position as President of the Artificial Intelligence Founders Association (AIFA), our CEO Roeland Decorte gave some further comments on the AIFA website:

Indeed, the EU AI Act, as we await its implementation in 24 months, creates uncertainty for many startups - whether they are based in, or just seeking to deal with (even indirectly) clients in EU member states. Take, for example, the already heavily regulated medtech AI space in which Decorte operates. It is still unclear whether existing regulatory, medical and safety classifications of AI, and the regulatory risk classification of AI as instituted by the Act, will merge or remain as two separate costly regulatory tracks that every EU-based company, and all those dealing with the EU, will have to navigate (and pay for) simultaneously.

While, hopefully, by the time of the Act's implementation these two tracks will be harmonised, at present the lack of clarity creates uncertainty. The regulatory costs would likely be too high for any EU startups, and any startups wanting to deal with the EU, to be able to bear (especially in the early stages). Such a scenario, where startups are priced out due to two sets of regulatory consultants, two sets of regulatory paperwork, and so forth, would only benefit the largest players, enabling the very monopolies the EU aims to avoid through the AI Act.

The UK's choice to take a more balanced, "slow but determined" approach, avoiding regulating "the short term" but nevertheless putting appropriate safeguards in place to monitor and build up a safe AI environment, is encouraging, and will, we hope, be picked up by the successive government. Next to the obvious linguistic and cultural aspects, it seems likely that the EU AI Act played a significant role in the decision of Scale AI and CoreWeave to choose London for their European HQ.