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“Are there any emotional sentences, loaded statements, rhetorical devices in the given text? Please identify, tokenise and list all of them.”

The text in the picture above is an answer to the prompt given to ChatGPT by the President of the Kyiv School of Economics Tymofiy Mylovanov in a masterclass dedicated to using AI to detect and combat disinformation. The text in question was a study by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland about Western businesses who remained in Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“Uncovering and busting disinformation is one of the significant challenges Ukraine is facing. If you choose the prompts carefully, ChatGPT can analyse massive amounts of information ― not as well as trained humans, but in just a few minutes,” says Mylovanov.

New AI tools have a positive image in Ukraine and are used in distance learning, business meetings, budget compiling and in warfare. On the other hand, officials and experts are calling for the development of a policy on ChatGPT usage. And there are some disappointments: when ChatGPT answers to users with narratives that echo Russian propaganda.

Last March the Italian data protection authority (DPA) temporarily blocked OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Italy. The authority criticised OpenAI for not describing how it trains its algorithms and not offering users the possibility of deleting or correcting inaccurate data. Open AI has since made some modifications, and Italy has allowed use of the software again, but doubts remain.

OpenAI has stated the AI is trained using “information that is publicly available on the internet”. This means that the AI “crawls” the web to train the algorithm. Such activity is problematic under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), especially when it takes into account criminal activity.

For example, a malevolent actor could use ChatGPT to access a public blogpost of mine, where I write about LGBTQ+ unions, to create a database of LGBTQ+ individuals which could be up for sale to a reactionary government.

OpenAI also mentions another source: “information that we license from third parties”. It is not clear who such “third parties” are and how they collect data. GDPR prohibits the use of illegally formed databases.

The second issue concerns the rights of the data subject. The DPA demanded ChatGPT allow the removal and rectification of data, on request of the data subject. The company has made some changes, but has declared that it cannot guarantee the rectification of data due to technical reasons.

This is an issue that is not unique to ChatGPT as these technologies are increasingly being used in other areas, such as recruitment. For example, if you were applying for a job, a recruiter could stop your prospects of winning a position due to inaccurate information about you in an illegally created database.

These are some of the unanswered questions that require a clear position from national governments and European institutions.

Will there ever be a European alternative to ChatGPT? AI development requires a huge processing capacity to train Large Language Models — but this is an expensive resource that major European universities and companies do not have.

According to a study by the German AI Association, it would take 350 million euros to set up such a data centre. That is the equivalent of building 50 km of motorway. The association founded an initiative together with nine European countries to develop a project.

However, it is questionable whether the German government will co-finance the project. ​The budget has been under discussion for months.

Indrek Seppo is a data scientist and AI expert at the University of Tartu.

European Focus: Technology entrepreneurs published a joint statement a few months ago, suggesting putting the development of AI systems on hold for six months. What do you think of this idea?

Indrek Seppo: I don’t think it would be technically feasible. In addition, I have no faith that we will be able to figure out in six months how to continue. Even if artificial intelligence develops consciousness – and it will inevitably happen in my opinion – we do not know today how it will behave, or how it will be used.

Should countries prepare legislation or another institutional framework for AI to regulate its increasingly frequent use?

Yes, our laws definitely need to change because of AI. But the problem is that nobody knows how. Regulation just for the sake of it would not help anyone and might only worsen the situation.

A simple example: We have millions of graphics cards in people’s hands. How do you regulate what a teenager does in his bedroom? Good luck!

What are the most common misconceptions about AI?

Artificial intelligence is not omnipotent. It will be smart, it will probably have consciousness, but it will not be omnipotent. Taking over the world will also be a serious challenge for AI because superhuman intellect is not enough.

I also see a misconception that AI is somehow just a statistical machine that imitates intellect. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, functions like a duck, then it is a duck!

Many people are concerned that AI wants to reproduce, and to take over the world. That could happen, but it’s by no means certain. Our human desires evolved long before our minds did. Maybe in a few years our best psychiatrists will investigate why artificial intelligence keeps wanting to switch itself off.

Airbnb’s claim “Belong anywhere” may sound like one of those slogans that are so generic they become meaningless. For me, this kind of travelling absolutely kept what it promised.

On a trip to Copenhagen for my girlfriend’s birthday in 2014, we got sick and spent five days almost completely in a one-room student apartment. It was great! We felt very Danish, lying in bed behind large uncurtained windows, looking at brick-lined buildings, seagulls and cyclists, and sitting on simple yet classy chairs, which we considered buying for ourselves.

The laundry of our host, Lotte, was standing in a corner to dry. And when she accidentally came home a day early, it felt even more like we had made ourselves comfortable in someone else’s life.

By the way, would you have guessed that many Danes have windowless one square-metre bathrooms where the whole “room” gets wet when showering, while you concentrate on not tripping over the toilet? These are the kind of things that Airbnb taught me.

Many hosts were young adults like Lotte who handed over the keys to their flats, threw a large backpack over their shoulders, and left to sleep at their lover’s or parents’ place for a few days, in order to earn some extra cash.

Communicating beforehand, it was not unusual to exchange some personal background. It felt like texting a friend of a friend. Hosts’ recommendations helped us come as close as it gets for tourists to “really” get to know a city. Airbnb was part of how I wanted to travel.

I still book Airbnbs occasionally, but I can’t recall when I last felt like I stayed at someone’s home. Keys are left in boxes with number codes, the furniture is functional, but generic. Quite obviously no-one lives in these flats, and they’re not even cheap any more.

Airbnb has become just another site for booking holiday apartments. Given the many negative effects for popular destinations, it might just as well go away for good.

Zoya Lobod, Kyiv entrepreneur

Soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, online lodging marketplace Airbnb declared it would provide help for up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in Europe, US and Canada. The San Francisco-based company offered vouchers for up to €2,000, to be used for renting a place for up to 14 days.

According to Airbnb’s website, 100,000 people took up the offer, but we don’t know how much Airbnb profited from its generous action PR-wise.

Last week students all over Italy started a “tent protest” against high rents. Bologna is Italy’s university town par excellence: home to the oldest university in the world. Emily Clancy is the deputy mayor of Bologna.

How much does a room in Bologna cost for a student? Is there a housing emergency? Does it infringe on the right to study?

For a room, a student pays on average 400-450 euro per month, and sometimes hundreds more: even 800 euro. Such costs are unsustainable. Before the pandemic, the municipality received fewer than 2,000 applications for rent subsidies. This year, 11,000 have arrived.

I do not call it an “emergency” because I do expect structural answers. Housing is currently a priority for the city: Bologna must be attractive without marginalising or expelling the most vulnerable groups.

Already years ago, as a city councillor and leader of the left-wing movement ‘Civic Coalition’, you promoted a public debate on the impact of Airbnb. What is the role of this platform in the current rental crisis?

Its role is remarkable. Data tell us that the collapse of agreed rental contracts goes hand in hand with the increase in listings on the platforms for short tourist rentals: until 2016 in Bologna there were around 32,000 agreed rental contracts, today they are down to 26,000. In the same years, listings on Airbnb have risen from around 800 to over 4,000 today.

Now that you are in government in Bologna, which initiatives are you taking to tackle Airbnb and rentals? And what has Giorgia Meloni’s government done?

The sporadic resources that used to come for the rent subsidy have been completely cut by this government. We have presented a plan for the right to housing which is unparalleled in Bologna’s recent history: it contains a 200 million euro package with which we intend to finance many strategies, from creating a social renting agency to renovating our public housing stock and regenerating abandoned urban sites.

The aim is to convert unused places and to reshape them as a common good. We cannot regulate Airbnb directly, as Barcelona has done. So what we are doing is promoting a municipalist alliance with ten other cities like Milan and Naples, and exerting political pressure together for a national law to regulate such platforms.

Over 53,000 people moved away from Amsterdam in 2021, according to the central bureau of statistics CBS. That is more than five percent of the total population of the city.

Noise, crowds, dissatisfaction with their neighbourhood, and rising housing costs are among the top concerns cited by locals in a report published by Rabobank. These are “signals that the limit has been reached and liveability is in danger,” admits the municipality.

Amsterdam is seeing a surge in mass tourism (19 million overnight visitors per year), but also a rising population of 921,000 people currently, many of whom are expats willing to pay high rents and house prices.

The largest Spanish cities are choosing divergent paths to follow in the future. Madrid and Barcelona face similar challenges, especially in terms of access to housing, rising rents and the explosion of tourist apartments.

This phenomenon is mainly caused by Airbnb, but not only. Even though the diagnosis is similar, the cure for tackling the problem is widely different in the two cities.

Barcelona, in the hands of a former housing activist Ada Colau, has been trying for years to achieve what her supporters call ‘a more liveable city’, with a series of measures limiting the numbers of tourist apartments. Since 2015, the city has imposed a moratorium on the construction of new tourist apartments. Since 2017, the city has established quotas for tourist apartments in the most at-risk areas, limiting the issuing of new licences.

Madrid, which has been in the hands of the conservative PP since 2019, has taken a different path: no regulation of tourist rentals.

The restrictions in Barcelona and the “laissez-faire” attitude in Madrid have had an effect: last February, Madrid registered an increase of 9.3% in tourist apartments compared to the same month in 2022, while Barcelona registered a 25.1% decrease, according to the National Statistics Institute.

But for Barcelona, the problem remains: apart from being one of the most visited cities in Spain, just a month ago a real-estate company found a legal loophole, backed by the Judicial Court, that allowed the firm to transform 140 apartments in the same building into accommodation for tourists. The case caused an uproar and showed one of the biggest problems still facing Barcelona: the limitation of what a city can do without a national strategy.

Meanwhile, the ‘turismofobia’ (hate for tourists) is growing. This is a paradox in the second-most-visited country in the world, where tourism accounts for 12% of the GDP. What the residents are seeing, however, is that neighbourhoods are less occupied by longtime residents… and instead with tourists.

Art historian András Rényi on the tough conversation about WWII memory in Hungary.

The Hungarian state and society is shirking its responsibility for the Holocaust – this is one of the most frequent criticisms of the memorial to the Victims of the German occupation, erected in Budapest in 2014.

This disapproval of a memorial which makes no mention of Hungary’s role in one of the 20th century’s darkest chapters has even developed into a grassroots protest. For almost ten years, civil members of the Living Memorial movement have regularly gathered near the memorial to talk about their memories, such as the role of Hungarian authorities in the holocaust, and family deportations and mass killings.

András Rényi talks about this initiative.

How does this debate affect the memory of the Second World War?

Symbolic politics is one of the most important playing fields of the Hungarian regime of today. Under the current constitution, Hungary was not sovereign for 46 years due to the German and Soviet occupations, and everything that happened during this period was down to collaborators.

In the controversial statue, a German eagle swoops down on the Archangel Gabriel, who drops the orb (part of the Hungarian crown jewels) from his hand. The same Archangel leads the conquering Hungarians towards the Carpathian Basin on the monument in Heroes’ Square.

These two works of art in Budapest mark the beginning and the end of Hungary’s thousand years of history, and the beginning of a new Viktor Orbán era, which takes no responsibility for the sins of the past.

Has it been possible to counterbalance this message?

The Living Memorial movement is one of the few initiatives that forced the Orbán government to a symbolic defeat. The occupation memorial – which attracted such criticism – has never been officially inaugurated.

What is the status of the memory of the Second World War today?

The knowledge and experience accumulated during the Second World War becomes more and more distant and impersonal. And now it is being reactivated, because of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The images of the massacre in Bucha shocked the whole European public, for example. Putin’s aggression has reinforced the sense of danger in the liberal world.