Thierry Breton

Few European leaders have spent more time thinking about the risks and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence than Thierry Breton. Decades before the European Commission’s internal market chief was tasked with facilitating the recent passage of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act—the world’s first AI law, which came into force in August, and the most comprehensive to date—he was a computer scientist  turned sci-fi writer whose 1980s novels delved presciently into topics like fake news and generative AI. All these years later, his 1985 novel Vatican III was “pretty accurate,” he tells TIME, laughing.

That foresight, paired with his previous experience as a tech and telecom executive and France’s Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry, made Breton uniquely equipped to deal with the laborious negotiation process behind the AI Act—one that involved years of engagement with numerous stakeholders (among them governments, tech companies, and researchers) on issues as wide ranging as transparency, data privacy, and misinformation.

“We had these large consultations with everyone,” Breton says—a task made easier, he says, because he was already well acquainted with so many of the players involved from his time in business. “They have been [at] times my partners, my competitors, my customers,” he says. “But I have also been a Minister of Finance, so I know the interest that you have to defend when you defend the general interest of a country or of a continent like Europe.”

Final “trilogue” negotiations over the AI bill, during which E.U. officials sought to reach agreement between the European Parliament, the European Commision, and the bloc’s 27 member states, took 38 hours. “It was the longest in European history,” says Breton, who describes his role as being an “honest broker” between the parties.

The outcome is legislation that Breton says seeks to balance the quest for innovation with the European public’s best interest. “It’s our mission to make sure that in any spaces where our fellow citizens live, we [politicians] provide security,” Breton says. “We are just starting to do it now, finally, in the digital space. But of course, it’s a never-ending fight, like in the physical one.”

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