A beginner’s guide to AI: Policy
The US, EU, China, and Russia… where do they stand?
Yesterday
Artificial intelligence has traditionally been swept in with other technologies when it comes to policy and regulation.
That worked well in the days when algorithm-based tech was mostly used for data processing and crunching numbers. But thedeep learning explosionthat began around 2014 changed everything.
In the years since, we’ve seen the inception and mass adoption of privacy-smashing technologies such asvirtual assistants,facial recognition, andonline trackers.
Just a decade ago our biggest privacy concerns, as citizens, involved worrying about the government tracking us through our cell phone signals or snooping on our email.
Today, we know that AI trackers are following our every move online. Cameras record everything we do in public, even inour own neighborhoods, and there wereat least 40 millionsmart speakers sold in Q4 of 2020 alone.
Today
Regulators and government entities around the world are trying to catch up to the technology and implement polices that make sense for their particular brand of governance.
In the US, there’slittle in the way of regulation. In fact the US government is highly invested in many AI technologies the global community considers problematic. It developslethal autonomous weapons (LAWS), its policies allow law enforcement officers to usefacial recognition and internet crawlerswithout oversight, and there are no rules or laws prohibiting “snake oil” predictive AI services.
In Russia,the official policyis one of democratizing AI research by pooling data. A preview of the nation’sfirst AI policydraft indicates Russia plans to develop tools that allow its citizens to control and anonymize their own data.
However, the Russian government has also been connected toadversarial AI opstargeting governments and civilians around the globe. It’s difficult to discern what rules Russia’s private sector will face when it comes to privacy and AI.
And, to the best of our knowledge, there’s no declassified data on Russia’s military policies when it comes to the use of AI. The best we can do is speculate based on past reports and statements made by the country’s current leader, Vladmir Putin.
Putin,speaking to Russian students in 2017, said “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
China, on the other hand, has been relatively transparent about it’s AI programs. In 2017 China released the world’s firstrobust AI policy planincorporating modern deep learning technologies and predicted future machine learning tech.
The PRC intends on beingthe global leader in AItechnology by 2030. It’s program to achieve this goal includes massive investments from the private sector, academia, and the government.
US military leaders believeChina’s military policies concerning AI are aimed at the development of LAWS that don’t require a human in the loop.
Europe’svision for AI policyis a bit different. Where the US, China, and Russia appear focused on the military and global competitive-financial aspects of AI, the EU is defining and crafting policies that put privacy and citizen-safety at the forefront.
In this respect, the EU currently seeks to limit facial recognition and other data-gathering technologies and to ensure citizens are explicitly informed when a product or service records their information.
The future
Predicting the future of AI policy is a tricky matter. Not only do we have to take into account how each nation currently approaches development and regulation, but we have to try to imagine how AI technology itself will advance in each country.
Let’s start with the EU:
In Russia, of course, things are different:
Moving to China, the future’s a bit easier to predict:
And that just brings us to the US:
At the end of the day, it’s impossible to make strong predictions because politicians around the globe are still generally ignorant when it comes to the reality of modern AI and the most-likely scenarios for the future.
Technology policy is often a reactionary discipline: countries tend to regulate things only after they’ve proven problematic. And, we don’t know what major events or breakthroughs could prompt radical policy change for any given nation.
In 2021, the field of artificial intelligence is at an inflection point. We’re between eurekas, waiting on autonomy to come of age, and hoping that our world leaders can come to a safe accord concerning LAWS and international privacy regulations.
Story byTristan Greene
Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns:(show all)Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns: He/him
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
