“How the EU’s Code of Practice Advances AI Safety” by Henry Papadatos

The European Union just published the finalized Code of Practice for general-purpose AI models, transforming the AI Act's high-level requirements into concrete standards that will likely shift frontier AI companies' practices toward safer ones. Among the Code's three chapters (copyright, transparency, and safety & security), requirements outlined in the Safety and Security section mark particular advances in frontier AI safety. The chapter — drafted by chairs Yoshua Bengio, Marietje Schaake, and Matthias Samwald, along with six vice chairs — targets general-purpose models deemed to pose systemic risks, currently defined as those trained with more than 10^25 floating-point operations (FLOPs). The 10^25 threshold captures all of today's frontier models and can be adapted as the technology evolves. The Code emerged from an extensive consultation process with over a thousand stakeholders (from industry, academia, and civil society) providing feedback across multiple rounds. Companies have a powerful incentive to adopt the Code [...] ---Outline:(01:53) What Companies Must Do(02:37) Key Advances Beyond Current Practice(02:41) Risk Identification(03:47) Risk Analysis(05:13) Pre-commitment Through Risk Tiers(05:35) Transparency and External Validation(06:42) Cybersecurity and Incident Reporting(07:41) Gaps and Enforcement Challenges(10:03) Implications for Global AI Governance --- First published: July 12th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/how-the-eus-code-of-practice-advances --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.