Have we really learned nothing about regulation from the disastrous state of the social networks?
The news of the day is that Joe Biden has finally decided to throw his hat in the regulatory ring by issuing the first executive order to set the standards for the safety and security of artificial intelligence, obliging companies that develop products and services based on this technology to develop standards and share the results of their security tests with the US government.
For someone who has spent his entire professional life defining his research interest as “the effects of technology on people, companies and society”, it’s both unfortunate and dangerous that we do not seem to have learned anything about previous regulatory efforts, namely the failure to impose any order on social media, and that we are apparently determined to repeat the same mistakes.
Let’s be clear: the standards and security testing of a technology can never ever be left in the hands of those who stand to make money from it. Never. Otherwise, be prepared to pay the consequences. The potential effects of a technology such as artificial intelligence cover absolutely all areas of life in society, not the least of which are privacy, discrimination, civil rights, and labor markets, which does not mean that we should stop researching or developing this technology — impossible anyway…
