Imagine a not-too-distant future where you let an intelligent robot manage your finances. It knows everything about you. It follows your moves, analyzes markets, adapts to your goals and invests faster and smarter than you can. Your investments soar. But then one day, you wake up to a nightmare: Your savings have been transferred to a rogue state, and they’re gone.
You seek remedies and justice but find none. Who’s to blame? The robot’s developer? The artificial intelligence company behind the robot’s “brain”? The bank that approved the transactions? Lawsuits fly, fingers point, and your lawyer searches for precedents, but finds none. Meanwhile, you’ve lost everything.
This is not the doomsday scenario of human extinction that some people in the AI field have warned could arise from the technology. It is a more realistic one and, in some cases, already present. AI systems are already making life-altering decisions for many people, in areas ranging from education to hiring and law enforcement. Health insurance companies have used AI tools to determine whether to cover patients’ medical procedures. People have been arrested based on faulty matches by facial recognition algorithms.
By bringing government and industry together to develop policy solutions, it is possible to reduce these risks and future ones. I am a former IBM executive with decades of experience in digital transformation and AI. I now focus on tech policy as a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. I also advise tech startups and invest in venture capital.
Drawing from this experience, my team spent a year researching a way forward for AI governance. We conducted interviews with 49 tech industry leaders and members of Congress, and analyzed 150 AI-related bills introduced in the last session of Congress. We used this data to develop a model for AI governance that fosters innovation while also offering protections against harms, like a rogue AI draining your life savings.
Striking a balance
The increasing use of AI in all aspects of people’s lives raises a new set of questions to which history has few answers. At the same time, the urgency to address how it should be governed is growing. Policymakers appear to be paralyzed, debating whether to let innovation flourish without controls or risk slowing progress. However, I believe that the binary choice between regulation and innovation is a false one.
Instead, it’s possible to chart a different approach that can help guide innovation in a direction that adheres to existing laws and societal norms without stifling creativity, competition and entrepreneurship.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tamlin Bason explains the regulatory landscape and the need for a balanced approach to AI governance.
The U.S. has consistently demonstrated its ability to drive economic growth. The…
