> EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights. What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

As you said, in spirit. In fact the EU’s AI Act is not really human rights legislation. (It exempts military and national-security uses.) Where it comes close, e.g. in seeking to ban facial recognition or social scoring, it does so clumsily.

So in practice, the EU has passed a series of laws that essentially make AI a monopoly of military and intelligence-community interests while forcing its consumers to use foreign products. Not exactly a win.

> What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

Innovative methods to destroy human life are "stifled" by measures intended to preserve human life. What to you mean by "progress" -- the betterment of the human condition, or the enrichment of the few and powerful?

EU legislature is an actual corpus of laws. It’s imperfect, but it’s arguably better than having a guy that can block a model or threat companies because they crossed him.

> EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights

Protect human rights as defined by EU legislature, obviously. And privacy in public places, for example, doesn't seem to be an undebatable human right.

Heck, I hate street views disfigured by huge privacy blobs.

You can protect human rights without stifling progress. It's not a "pick one of the above" situation.

The EU can and should reform many parts of its sclerotic laws and bureaucracies. Whether it can do so before it becomes a subservient puppet state which serves as a battleground for competing powers remains to be seen.

That bureaucrats can kill any kind of progress with the best of intentions.

That's a loaded question.

> What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

Perhaps it merely says that certain good positive things stifle other good, positive things?

Having 24 languages is a good, positive thing for the EU's cultural distinctiveness, respect for citizens' heritage, and the fairness of the nexus of power not excluding speakers of any country's language.

And yet it's a major barrier to cross-border trade, military cooperation, popular support of closer political ties, and the prospects of any EU companies growing large enough to counterbalance the amazons and facebooks of the world.

A ban on cracking eggs serves the interests of eggs, while stifling the omelette industry.

That's a bit like arguing that the USSR was, in spirit, trying to defend workers' rights, and therefore we should not have opposed it. At some point, the gap between what something claims to be "in spirit" and what it actually is in practice becomes too large to ignore.

“Human rights” as defined by the continent that brought you both The Enlightenment and The Holocaust

Feels like a reaaaaal roll of the dice

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> What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

Claiming that GDPR and the EU AI Act "protect human rights" is very, very far-fetched. How does the training of, say, Claude or GPT-X models, hurt human rights?

And yet the EU legislature seems to be actively hostile to some human rights, such as the right to free expression and the right to keep and bear arms. How do you account for that discrepancy?

> We can debate the details and implementation but EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights

That's an unfounded assertion. Of course, politicians will claim this to be the case. I don't see how patronising citizens protects their human rights, though.