Sure. This seems a cultural difference between US and EU. I've lived extensively in both. EU is known to be burdensome in terms of tech regulations. Normally I find this egregious. However when children are involved I am far more tolerant of their requirements. 10% OpEx overhead to make sure children are protected seems entirely reasonable to me. If you're not prepared to meet their requirements then skip the EU.

> That’s the innovation tax I’m worried about especially when schools need better tools now.

But how do you, and more importantly the school, know that the tool is better? If you skip the bias review, how can you, and more importantly the school, be sure your AI tool isn't grading every kid with a certain geographical slang less than others for example?

To me this isn't unlike the security stuff, like ISO27001. We make B2B software and had about 15 employees when our customers started pushing ISO27001 or similar hard.

We had no choice but to step up. We have hired multiple people just to deal with that aspect, as well as implementing large changes in our IT infra.

And frankly I think it was a very good thing and has made our org much better and robust.

Suppose for a moment that instead of AI, it's guns. You say: that's ridiculous, I have this safety testing bureacracy and all this reporting to do in the EU, it might not worth opening a firearm factory or shop in Europe. Yes! That's the whole point! We don't want shootings in schools. We don't want unsafe AI. If innovation is dangerous for people, we slow it down until you can demonstrate it's safe. Safety and privacy first, innovation is less important than the resulting quality of life of the consumer.