NST Leader: 'AI is too important not to regulate'
Calling it "Winning the AI Race", he said his action plan is designed to put the US ahead of other nations. "America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with green light, not strangled with red tape", the media quoted him as saying.
There is only one way to read Trump's "green light" message: whatever regulations that stand in the way of AI "innovation" will be removed.
First to go will be whatever that remains of the former administration's regulations. Is this the right path to take on AI?
While tech titans will say yes, there are others who say no because AI comes with so many unknowns. Not even the AI entrepreneurs know where the technology is taking us.
Certainly, AI has promises of benefits, but they come clothed with known and unknown risks.
Alphabet and Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai writing an opinion piece in the Financial Times on May 23, 2023 said that "AI is too important not to regulate and too important to regulate well", meaning regulating in a way that balances innovation and potential harms.
But a race to be first will certainly not strike the right balance. Google's promise is to develop AI responsibly, but when the profit chase becomes hot would the pledge still hold?
Pichai must know AI is fast becoming a crowded space, with every company racing to shape the technology according to its business needs.
In other words, profit before people and planet. Our bad old free market economic model — the myth that markets perform best when they are free of regulations — has followed us into the digital world.
Myth-busting economist Ha-Joon Chang has made it crystal clear that the free market doesn't exist anywhere in the world. With this "free-to-choose" mindset, nothing can be developed responsibly, let alone AI.
We have long been witnesses of irresponsible capitalism, at times victims even. Hence the call for "compassionate capitalism", a sign that the free-to-choose market model has hit the lowest of low. Innovative AI development is only possible in a regulation-free space is a similar myth by another name.
This is why the European Union has opted for the AI Act, one of whose aims is to make the technology "work for people and is a force for good in society".
It came into effect on Aug 1 last year, claiming the honour of being the first-ever legislation to address the risks of AI.
Whether or not such a goal is enforced is a question of political will, not the fault of the law.
The EU model isn't the only way to tame AI.
A better approach is a global AI treaty. But this will only work in a rules-based world order. Ours isn't.
The Paris Treaty on climate change is in a bit of a shambles. So are the Rome Statute and the Law of the Sea. Regional or national approach may be inevitable.
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