The Brookings Institution hosted this excellent event on frontier AI regulation this week featuring a panel discussion I was on that followed opening remarks from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA). I come in around the 51-min mark of the event video and explain why I worry that AI policy now threatens to devolve into an all-out war on computation and open source innovation in particular.
I argue that some pundits and policymakers appear to be on the way to substituting a very real existential risk (authoritarian govt control over computation/science) for a hypothetic existential risk of powerful AGI. I explain how there are better, less destructive ways to address frontier AI concerns than the highly repressive approaches currently being considered.
I have developed these themes and arguments at much greater length in a series of essays over on Medium over the past few months. If you care to read more, the four key articles to begin with are:
- “Microsoft’s New AI Regulatory Framework & the Coming Battle over Computational Control,” May 29, 2023.
- “Will AI Policy Became a War on Open Source Following Meta’s Launch of LLaMA 2?” July 19, 2023.
- “Is Telecom Licensing a Good Model for Artificial Intelligence?” July 8, 2023.
- “Blumenthal-Hawley AI Regulatory Framework Escalates the War on Computation,” September 13, 2023.
In June, I also released this longer R Street Institute report on “Existential Risks & Global Governance Issues around AI & Robotics,” and then spent an hour talking about these issues on the TechPolicyPodcast about “Who’s Afraid of Artificial Intelligence?” All of my past writing and speaking on AI, ML, and robotic policy can be found here, and that list is update every month.
As always, I’ll have much more to say on this topic as the war on computation expands. This is quickly becoming the most epic technology policy battle of modern times.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.