This a running list of all the essays and reports I’ve already rolled out on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotics. Why have I decided to spend so much time on this issue? Because this will become the most important technological revolution of our lifetimes. Every segment of the economy will be touched in some fashion by AI, ML, robotics, and the power of computational science. It should be equally clear that public policy will be radically transformed along the way.
Eventually, all policy will involve AI policy and computational considerations. As AI “eats the world,” it eats the world of public policy along with it. The stakes here are profound for individuals, economies, and nations. As a result, AI policy will be the most important technology policy fight of the next decade, and perhaps next quarter century. Those who are passionate about the freedom to innovate need to prepare to meet the challenge as proposals to regulate AI proliferate.
There are many socio-technical concerns surrounding algorithmic systems that deserve serious consideration and appropriate governance steps to ensure that these systems are beneficial to society. However,
there is an equally compelling public interest in ensuring that AI innovations are developed and made widely available to help improve human well-being across many dimensions. And that’s the case that I’ll be dedicating my life to making in coming years.
Here’s the list of what I’ve done so far. I will continue to update this as new material is released: Continue reading →
In an amazing new MIT Technology Review piece, Antonio Regalado discusses how, “Some scientists are taking a DIY coronavirus vaccine, and nobody knows if it’s legal or if it works.” It is another powerful example of how “citizen-science” and medical self-experimentation (or “biohacking”) is increasingly being used to improve health outcomes, enhance human capabilities, or fight against deadly diseases like COVID. Regalado reports that:
Nearly 200 covid-19 vaccines are in development and some three dozen are at various stages of human testing. But in what appears to be the first “citizen science” vaccine initiative, Estep and at least 20 other researchers, technologists, or science enthusiasts, many connected to Harvard University and MIT, have volunteered as lab rats for a do-it-yourself inoculation against the coronavirus. They say it’s their only chance to become immune without waiting a year or more for a vaccine to be formally approved.
Among those who’ve taken the DIY vaccine is George Church, the celebrity geneticist at Harvard University, who took two doses a week apart earlier this month. The doses were dropped in his mailbox and he mixed the ingredients himself.
Regalado notes that this is all happening despite legal and ethical questions:
By distributing directions and even supplies for a vaccine, though, the Radvac group is operating in a legal gray area. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires authorization to test novel drugs in the form of an investigational new drug approval. But the Radvac group did not ask the agency’s permission, nor did it get any ethics board to sign off on the plan.
Margaret Talbot has written an excellent New Yorker essay entitled, “The Rogue Experimenters,” which documents the growth of the D.I.Y.-bio movement. This refers to the organic, bottom-up, citizen science movement, or “leaderless do-ocracy” of tinkerers, as she notes. I highly recommend you check it out.
As I noted in my new book on
Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance, “DIY health services and medical devices are on the rise thanks to the combined power of open-source software, 3D printers, cloud computing, and digital platforms that allow information sharing between individuals with specific health needs. Average citizens are using these new technologies to modify their bodies and abilities, often beyond the confines of the law.”
Talbot discusses many of the same examples I discuss in my book, including:
the Four Thieves Vinegar collective, which devised instructions for building its own version of the EpiPen;
e-nable, an international collective of thirty thousand volunteers, designs and 3-D-prints prosthetic hands and arms (and which has, more recently, distributed more than fifty thousand face shields in more than twenty-five countries.);
GenSpace and other community biohacking labs; and
Open Insulin and Open Artificial Pancreas System.
I like the way Talbot compares these movements to the hacker and start-up culture of the Digital Revolution: Continue reading →
There is nothing like a crisis to concentrate the mind. And the Covid-19 catastrophe has certainly done this. It has speeded up latent trends and posed new questions. The issue of our technologically informed capacity to solve problems is just one example.
He continues on to argue:
a crisis like Covid-19 will necessarily pose new urgent questions that could not have been anticipated. New initiatives will rise to meet these. Pre-existing skills, knowledge, technologies and attitudes will always be the starting point of new problem-solving quests. Where and how we focus attention will, in part, be based on prior cultural assumptions and existing technologies, and also on the novelty of the problem to be solved.
Lewis discusses how innovative minds are pushing back against archaic regulatory barriers, business models and government regulations. As he nicely summarizes:
Unimagined solutions are being pushed while a more open attitude towards experimentation, risk-taking and side-stepping onerous and costly regulation is starting to emerge. Human needs are breaking down yesterday’s precautionary approaches.
Eventually, people take notice of how regulators and their rules encumber entrepreneurial activities, and they act to evade them when public welfare is undermined. Working around the system becomes inevitable when the permission society becomes so completely dysfunctional and counterproductive.
This was happening before the coronavirus outbreak, but the crisis has supercharged this phenomenon. Evasive entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the growth of new devices and platforms that let citizens circumvent (or perhaps just ignore) public policies that limit innovative efforts. These can include common tools like smartphones, computers, and various new interactive platforms, as well as more specialized technologies like cryptocurrencies, private drones, immersive technologies (like virtual reality), 3D printers, the “Internet of Things,” and sharing economy platforms and services. But that list just scratches the surface and the public is increasingly using these new technological capabilities to assert themselves and push back against laws and regulations that defy common sense and hold back progress.
Lawmakers and regulators need to consider a balanced response to evasive entrepreneurialism that is rooted in the realization that technology creators and users are less likely to seek to evade laws and regulations when public policies are more in line with common sense. Yesterday’s heavy-handed approaches that are rooted in the Precautionary Principle will need to be reformed to make sure progress can happen.
In a new essay in The Dallas Morning News (“Licensing restrictions for health care workers need to be flexible to fight coronavirus“), Trace Mitchell and I discuss recent efforts to reform occupational licensing restrictions for health care workers to help fight the coronavirus. Trace and I have writtenextensively about the need for licensing flexibility over the past couple of years, but it is needed now more than ever. Luckily, some positive reforms are now underway.
We highlight efforts in states like Massachusetts and Texas to reform their occupational licensing rules in response to the crisis, as well as federal reforms aimed at allowing reciprocity across state lines. We conclude by noting that:
It should not take a crisis of this magnitude for policymakers to reconsider the way we prevent fully qualified medical professionals from going where they are most needed. But that moment is now upon us. More leaders would be wise to conduct a comprehensive review of regulatory burdens that hinder sensible, speedy responses to the coronavirus crisis.
If nothing else, the relaxation of these rules should give us a better feel for how necessary strict licensing requirements truly are. Chances are, we will learn just how costly the regulations have been all along.
I became a little bit more of a cyborg this month with the addition of two new eyes—eye lenses, actually. Before I had even turned 50, the old lenses that Mother Nature gave me were already failing due to cataracts. But after having two operations this past month and getting artificial lenses installed, I am seeing clearly again thanks to the continuing miracles of modern medical technology.
Cataracts can be extraordinarily debilitating. One day you can see the world clearly, the next you wake up struggling to see through a cloudy ocular soup. It is like looking through a piece of cellophane wrap or a continuously unfocused camera.
If you depend on your eyes to make a living as most of us do, then cataracts make it a daily struggle to get even basic things done. I spend most of my time reading and writing each workday. Once the cataracts hit, I had to purchase a half-dozen pair of strong reading glasses and spread them out all over the place: in my office, house, car, gym bag, and so on. Without them, I was helpless.
Reading is especially difficult in dimly lit environments, and even with strong glasses you can forget about reading the fine print on anything. Every pillbox becomes a frightening adventure. I invested in a powerful magnifying glass to make sure I didn’t end up ingesting the wrong things.
For those afflicted with particularly bad cataracts, it becomes extraordinarily risky to drive or operate machinery. More mundane things—watching TV, tossing a ball with your kid, reading a menu at many restaurants, looking at art in a gallery—also become frustrating. Continue reading →
An important benefit of 5G cellular technology is more bandwidth and more reliable wireless services. This means carriers can offer more niche services, like smart glasses for the blind and remote assistance for autonomous vehicles. A Vox article last week explored an issue familiar to technology experts: will millions of new 5G transmitters and devices increase cancer risk? It’s an important question but, in short, we’re not losing sleep over it.
5G differs from previous generations of cellular technology in that “densification” is important–putting smaller transmitters throughout neighborhoods. This densification process means that cities must regularly approve operators’ plans to upgrade infrastructure and install devices on public rights-of-way. However, some homeowners and activists are resisting 5G deployment because they fear more transmitters will lead to more radiation and cancer. (Under federal law, the FCC has safety requirements for emitters like cell towers and 5G. Therefore, state and local regulators are not allowed to make permitting decisions based on what they or their constituents believe are the effects of wireless emissions.)
We aren’t public health experts; however, we are technology researchers and decided to explore the telecom data to see if there is a relationship. If radio transmissions increase cancer, we should expect to see a correlation between the number of cellular transmitters and cancer rates. Presumably there is a cumulative effect: the more cellular radiation people are exposed to, the higher the cancer rates.
From what we can tell, there is no link between cellular systems and cancer. Despite a huge increase in the number of transmitters in the US since 2000, the nervous system cancer rate hasn’t budged. In the US the number of wireless transmitters have increased massively–300%–in 15 years. (This is on the conservative side–there are tens of millions of WiFi devices that are also transmitting but are not counted here.)Continue reading →
Yesterday was National Lemonade Day. Over at the Mercatus Bridge blog, Jennifer Skees and I used the opportunity to highlight the increasing regulatory crackdown on kids operating ventures without first seeking the proper permits from local authorities. We ask, “wouldn’t it be better to teach them the value of hard work and entrepreneurial effort instead of threatening them with penalties for not getting costly permits to do basic jobs?” Here’s our answer:
Today is National Lemonade Day. For many Americans a lemonade stand was their first experience in entrepreneurship. But unfortunately, this time honored tradition that teaches the value of hard work, entrepreneurship, and innovation may be under threat from overzealous grown-ups.
Should we really force kids to get licenses to start lemonade stands, sell bottles of water outside a ballpark, or mow lawns for a little extra money? And wouldn’t it be better to teach them the value of hard work and entrepreneurial effort instead of threatening them with penalties for not getting costly permits to do basic jobs?
Recent news stories have highlighted examples of kids being confronted with local regulations that essential tell them not to be entrepreneurial until they’ve gotten someone’s blessing–or else face fines or other penalties for those efforts.
Out in San Francisco, for example, a neighbor threatened to call the police on an eight-year-old girl selling water to raise money for a trip to Disneyland after her mother had lost her job. The neighbor berated the little girl for “illegally selling water without a permit.” Luckily, national outrage seems to have fallen in favor of this rogue entrepreneur instead of “Permit Patty.” But this is far from an isolated case.
Another story went viral earlier this year involving kids and lemonade stands. Country Time lemonade pledged to pay the fines received or the permit cost for children’s lemonade stands. Who thought we’d reach the day when we need a Lemonade Legal Defense Fund? But just prior to the launch, Stapleton, Colorado police were called to shut down the lemonade stand of four and six year-old brothersfor failing to have a business license. Kids who probably can’t read or fill out the necessary forms are expected to obtain a formal license for a tradition that dates back about 120 years. Continue reading →
My professional life is dedicated to researching the public policy implications of various emerging technologies. Of the many issues and sectors that I cover, none are more interesting or important than advanced medical innovation. After all, new health care technologies offer the greatest hope for improving human welfare and longevity. Consequently, the public policies that govern these technologies and sectors will have an important bearing on just how much life-enriching or life-saving medical innovation we actually get going forward.
Few people are doing better reporting on the intersection of advanced technology and medicine — as well as the effects of regulation on those fields — than my Mercatus Center colleague Jordan Reimschisel. In a very short period of time, Jordan has completely immersed himself in these complex, cutting-edge topics and produced a remarkable body of work discussing how, in his words, “technology can merge with medicine to democratize medical decision making, empower patients to participate in the treatment process, and promote better health outcomes for more patients at lower and lower costs.” He gets deep into the weeds of the various technologies he writes about as well as the legal, ethical, and economic issues surrounding each topic.
I encouraged him to start an ongoing compendium of his work on these topics so that we could continue to highlight his research, some of which I have been honored to co-author with him. I have listed his current catalog down below, but jump over to this Medium page he set up and bookmark it for future reference. This is some truly outstanding work and I am excited to see where he goes next with topics as wide-ranging as “biohackerspaces,” democratized or “personalized” medicine, advanced genetic testing and editing techniques, and the future of the FDA in an age of rapid change.
Give Jordan a follow on Twitter (@jtreimschisel) and make sure to follow his Medium page for his dispatches from the front lines of the debate over advanced medical innovation and its regulation.
I’ve written herebefore about the problems associated with the “technopanic mentality,” especially when it comes to how technopanics sometimes come to shape public policy decisions and restict important new, life-enriching innovations. As I argued in a recent book, the problem with this sort Chicken Little thinking is that, “living in constant fear of worst-case scenarios—and premising public policy on them—means that best-case scenarios will never come about. When public policy is shaped by precautionary principle reasoning, it poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, social adaptation, and long-run prosperity.”
Perhaps the worst thing about worst-case thinking is how short-sighted and hubristic it can be. The technopanic crowd often has an air of snooty-ness about them in that they ask us to largely ignore the generally positive long-run trends associated with technological innovation and instead focus on hypothetical fears about an uncertain future that apparently only they can foresee. This is the case whether they are predicting the destruction of jobs, economy, lifestyles, or culture. Techno-dystopia lies just around the corner, they say, but the rest of us ignorant sheep who just can’t see it coming!
In his wonderful 2013 book,
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better, Clive Thompson correctly noted that “dystopian predictions are easy to generate” and “doomsaying is emotionally self-protective: if you complain that today’s technology is wrecking the culture, you can tell yourself you’re a gimlet-eyed critic who isn’t hoodwinked by high-tech trends and silly, popular activities like social networking. You seem like someone who has a richer, deeper appreciation for the past and who stands above the triviality of today’s life.”
Stated differently, the doomsayers are guilty of a type of social and technical arrogance. They are almost always wrong on history, wrong on culture, and wrong on facts. Again and again, humans have proven remarkably resilient in the face of technological change and have overcome short-term adversity. Yet, the technopanic pundits are almost never called out for their elitist attitudes later when their prognostications are proven wildly off-base. And even more concerning is the fact that their Chicken Little antics lead them and others to ignore the more serious risks that could exist out there and which are worthy of our attention.
Here’s a nice example of that last point that comes from a silent film made all the way back in 1911! Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
Margaret Talbot has written an excellent New Yorker essay entitled, “
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy
by Adam Thierer on July 29, 2022 · 0 comments
[last updated 4/3/2025 – Check my Medium page for latest posts]
This a running list of all the essays and reports I’ve already rolled out on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotics. Why have I decided to spend so much time on this issue? Because this will become the most important technological revolution of our lifetimes. Every segment of the economy will be touched in some fashion by AI, ML, robotics, and the power of computational science. It should be equally clear that public policy will be radically transformed along the way.
Eventually, all policy will involve AI policy and computational considerations. As AI “eats the world,” it eats the world of public policy along with it. The stakes here are profound for individuals, economies, and nations. As a result, AI policy will be the most important technology policy fight of the next decade, and perhaps next quarter century. Those who are passionate about the freedom to innovate need to prepare to meet the challenge as proposals to regulate AI proliferate.
There are many socio-technical concerns surrounding algorithmic systems that deserve serious consideration and appropriate governance steps to ensure that these systems are beneficial to society. However, there is an equally compelling public interest in ensuring that AI innovations are developed and made widely available to help improve human well-being across many dimensions. And that’s the case that I’ll be dedicating my life to making in coming years.
Here’s the list of what I’ve done so far. I will continue to update this as new material is released: Continue reading →