On Thursday, June 9, it was my great pleasure to return to my first work office at the Adam Smith Institute in London and give a talk on the future of innovation policy and the governance of artificial intelligence. James Lawson, who is affiliated with the ASI and wrote a wonderful 2020 study on AI policy, introduced me and also offered some remarks. Among the issues discussed:
What sort of governance vision should govern the future of innovation generally and AI in particular: the “precautionary principle” or “permissionless innovation”?
Which AI sectors are witnessing the most exciting forms of innovation currently?
What are the fundamental policy fault lines in the AI policy debates today?
Will fears about disruption and automation lead to a new Luddite movement?
How can “soft law” and decentralized governance mechanism help us solve pressing policy concerns surrounding AI?
How did automation affect traditional jobs and sectors?
Will the European Union’s AI Act become a global model for regulation and will it have a “Brussels Effect” in terms of forcing innovators across the world to come into compliance with EU regulatory mandates?
How will global innovation arbitrage affect the efforts by governments in Europe and elsewhere to regulate AI innovation?
Can the common law help address AI risk? How is the UK common law system superior to the US legal system?
What do we mean by “existential risk” as it pertains to artificial intelligence?
I have a massive study in the works addressing all these issues. In the meantime, you can watch the video of my London talk here. And thanks again to my friends at the Adam Smith Institute for hosting!
Last month, it was my great honor to be invited to be a keynote speaker at Lincoln Network’s Reboot 2018 “Innovation Under Threat” conference. Zach Graves interviewed me for 30 minutes about a wide range of topics, including: innovation arbitrage, evasive entrepreneurialism, technopanics, the pacing problem, permissionless innovation, technological civil disobedience, existential risk, soft law and more. They’ve now posted the full event video and you can watch it down below.
This afternoon, Berin Szoka asked me to participate in a TechFreedom conference on “COPPA: Past, Present & Future of Children’s Privacy & Media.” [CSPAN video is here.] It was a in-depth, 3-hour, 2-panel discussion of the Federal Trade Commission’s recent revisions to the rules issued under the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
While most of the other panelists were focused on the devilish details about how COPPA works in practice (or at least
should work in practice), I decided to ask a more provocative question to really shake up the discussion: What are we going to do when COPPA fails?
My notes for the event follow down below. I didn’t have time to put them into a smooth narrative, so please pardon the bullet points. Continue reading →
OnGuardOnline.gov is a project of a dozen federal agencies and several private child safety organizations who have collaborated to create a website which “provides practical tips from the federal government and the technology industry to help you be on guard against Internet fraud, secure your computer, and protect your personal information.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is particularly instrumental in maintaining and promoting the site but it works closely with those other agencies and organizations to craft messages and programs.
OnGuardOnline has just released a terrific new online safety resource called
Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids about Being Online. This 54-page document is an outstanding resource for parents. The report’s advice and recommendations are spot on across the board and I particularly want to highlight the important section right at the front of the document entitled, “Talk to Your Kids.” It begins: “The best way to protect your kids online? Talk to them. Research suggests that when children want important information, most rely on their parents.” Quite right. And the NetCetra report goes on to offer the following excellent advice:
Start early. After all, even toddlers see their parents use all kinds of devices. As soon as your child is using a computer, a cell phone or any mobile device, it’s time to talk to them about online behavior, safety, and security. As a parent, you have the opportunity to talk to your kid about what’s important before anyone else does.
Create an honest, open environment. Kids look to their parents to help guide them. Be supportive and positive. Listening and taking their feelings into account helps keep conversation afloat. You may not have all the answers, and being honest about that can go a long way.
1. Keep Current with Technology: Talk to teachers about what forms of Internet safety tools they implement in computer labs and technology classes, consider these safety tools for home use, and stay up-to-date on the capabilities of any mobile devices your child may have.
2. Keep Communicating with Your Kids: Find out who your child talks to online, educate your kids about the permanence of any “digital footprints” they leave behind, limit the use of social networks, and make it a habit to engage your kids in critical conversation—the more you talk to your kids about their online usage, the more they will learn to use digital products in a safe and healthy manner.
3. Keep Checking Your Kid’s Internet Activity: Keep computers in a central public location, check your child’s browsing histories, and limit your child’s computer time—there’s a whole world of outdoor and offline activities where they should be involved!
All good advice. I especially like their focus on getting parents to communicate early and often with their kids. It’s something I have beat the drum about quite a bit in my own workon the subject. Continue reading →
In an earlier post, I mentioned an important new online child safety task force report that has just been released from the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” Blue Ribbon Working Group. It’s a great report and I encourage you to read the whole thing. It was my great pleasure to serve on this task force, and as we started finalizing our conclusions and recommendations, I started thinking about how much of what we were finding and recommending was consistent with what past online safety task forces had also concluded.
By way of background, over the past decade, five major online safety task forces or blue ribbon commissions have been convened to study online safety issues. Two of these task forces were convened in the United States and issued reports in 2000 (“COPA Commission”) and 2002 (“Thornburgh Commission“). Another was commissioned by the British government in 2007 and issued in a major report in March 2008 (“Byron Review“). Finally, two additional online safety task forces were formed in the U.S. in 2008 and concluded their work, respectively, in January (“Internet Safety Technical Task Force“) and July (“Point Smart. Click Safe.“) of 2009. [And yet another task force — the Online Safety Technology Working Group — was recently formed and has now gotten underway.]
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 →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.