machine – Technology Liberation Front https://techliberation.com Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology Thu, 03 Apr 2025 23:20:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 6772528 My Latest Study on AI Governance https://techliberation.com/2023/04/20/my-latest-study-on-ai-governance/ https://techliberation.com/2023/04/20/my-latest-study-on-ai-governance/#comments Thu, 20 Apr 2023 18:25:29 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77114

The R Street Institute has just released my latest study on AI governance and how to address “alignment” concerns in a bottom-up fashion. The 40-page report is entitled, “Flexible, Pro-Innovation Governance Strategies for Artificial Intelligence.”

My report asks, is it possible to address AI alignment without starting with the Precautionary Principle as the governance baseline default? I explain how that is indeed possible. While some critics claim that no one is seriously trying to deal with AI alignment today, my report explains how no technology in history has been more heavily scrutinized this early in its life-cycle as AI, machine learning and robotics. The number of ethical frameworks out there already is astonishing. We don’t have too few alignment frameworks; we probably have too many!

We need to get serious about bringing some consistency to these efforts and figure out more concrete ways to a culture of safety by embedding ethics-by-design. But there is an equally compelling interest in ensuring that algorithmic innovations are developed and made widely available to society.

Although some safeguards will be needed to minimize certain AI risks, a more agile and iterative governance approach can address these concerns without creating overbearing, top-down mandates, which would hinder algorithmic innovations – especially at a time when America is looking to stay ahead of China and other nations in the global AI race.

My report explores the many ethical frameworks that professional associations have already formulated as well as the various other “soft law” frameworks that have been devised. I also consider how AI auditing and algorithmic impact assessments can be used to help formalize the twin objectives of “ethics-by-design” and keeping “humans in the loop,” which are the two principles that drive most AI governance frameworks. But it is absolutely essential that audits and impact assessments are done right to ensure it does not become an overbearing, compliance-heavy, and politicized nightmare that would undermine algorithmic entrepreneurialism and computational innovation.

Finally, my report reviews the extensive array of existing government agencies and policies that ALREADY govern artificial intelligence and robotics as well as the wide variety of court-based common law solutions that cover algorithmic innovations. The notion that America has no law or regulation covering artificial intelligence today is massively wrong, as my report explains in detail.

I hope you’ll take the time to check out my new report. This and my previous report on “Getting AI Innovation Culture Right” serve as the foundation of everything we have coming on AI and robotics from the R Street Institute. Next up will be a massive study on global AI “existential risks” and national security issues. Stay tuned. Much more to come!

In the meantime, you can find all my recent work here on my “Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy.”

Additional Reading:

]]> https://techliberation.com/2023/04/20/my-latest-study-on-ai-governance/feed/ 4 77114 What Policy Vision for Artificial Intelligence? https://techliberation.com/2023/04/02/what-policy-vision-for-artificial-intelligence/ https://techliberation.com/2023/04/02/what-policy-vision-for-artificial-intelligence/#comments Sun, 02 Apr 2023 21:32:49 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77103

In my latest R Street Institute report, I discuss the importance of “Getting AI Innovation Culture Right.” This is the first of a trilogy of major reports on what sort of policy vision and set of governance principles should guide the development of  artificial intelligence (AI), algorithmic systems, machine learning (ML), robotics, and computational science and engineering more generally. More specifically, these reports seek to answer the question, Can we achieve AI safety without innovation-crushing top-down mandates and massive new regulatory bureaucracies? 

These questions are particular pertinent as we just made it through a week in which we’ve seen a major open letter issued that calls for a 6-month freeze on the deployment of AI technologies, while a prominent AI ethicist argued that governments should go further and consider airstrikes data processing centers even if the exchange of nuclear weapons needed to be considered! On top of that, Italy became the first major nation to ban ChatGPT, the popular AI-enabled chatbot created by U.S.-based OpenAI.

My report begins from a different presumption: AI, ML and algorithmic technologies present society with enormously benefits and, while real risks are there, we can find better ways of addressing them. As I summarize:

The danger exists that policy for algorithmic systems could be formulated in such a way that innovations are treated as guilty until proven innocent—i.e., a precautionary principle approach to policy—resulting in many important AI applications never getting off the drawing board. If regulatory impediments block or slow the creation of life-enriching, and even life-saving, AI innovations, that would leave society less well-off and give rise to different types of societal risks.

I argue that it is essential we not trap AI in an “innovation cage” by establishing the wrong policy default for algorithmic governance but instead work through challenges as they come at us. The right policy default for the internet and for AI continues to be “innovation allowed.” But AI risks do require serious governance steps. Luckily, many tools exist and others are being created. While my next major report (due out April 20th) offers far more detail, this paper sketches out some of those mechanisms. 

The goal of algorithmic policy should be for policymakers and innovators to work together to find flexible, iterative, agile, bottom-up governance solutions over time. We can promote a culture of responsibility among leading AI innovators and balance safety and innovation for complex, rapidly evolving computational and computing technologies like AI. This approach is buttressed by existing laws and regulations, as well as common law and the courts.

The new Biden Admin “AI Bill of Rights” unfortunately represents a fear-based model of technology policymaking that breaks from the superior Clinton framework for the internet & digital technology. Our nation’s policy toward AI, robotics & algorithmic innovation should instead embrace a dynamic future and the enormous possibilities that await us.

Please check out my new paper for more details. Much more to come. And you can also check out my running list of research on AI, ML robotics policy.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2023/04/02/what-policy-vision-for-artificial-intelligence/feed/ 3 77103 Tech Regulation Will Increasingly Be Driven Through the Prism of “Algorithmic Fairness” https://techliberation.com/2022/11/06/tech-regulation-will-increasingly-be-driven-through-the-prism-of-algorithmic-fairness/ https://techliberation.com/2022/11/06/tech-regulation-will-increasingly-be-driven-through-the-prism-of-algorithmic-fairness/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2022 18:51:21 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77056

We are entering a new era for technology policy in which many pundits and policymakers will use “algorithmic fairness” as a universal Get Out of Jail Free card when they push for new regulations on digital speech and innovation. Proposals to regulate things like “online safety,” “hate speech,” “disinformation,” and “bias” among other things often raise thorny definitional questions because of their highly subjective nature. In the United States, efforts by government to control these things will often trigger judicial scrutiny, too, because restraints on speech violate the First Amendment. Proponents of prior restraint or even ex post punishments understand this reality and want to get around it. Thus, in an effort to avoid constitutional scrutiny and lengthy court battles, they are engaged in a rebranding effort and seeking to push their regulatory agendas through a techno-panicky prism of “algorithmic fairness” or “algorithmic justice.”

Hey, who could possibly be against FAIRNESS and JUSTICE? Of course, the devil is always in the details as Neil Chilson and I discuss in our new paper for the The Federalist Society and Regulatory Transparency Project on, “The Coming Onslaught of ‘Algorithmic Fairness’ Regulations.” We document how federal and state policymakers from both parties are currently considering a variety of new mandates for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automated systems that, if imposed, “would thunder through our economy with one of the most significant expansions of economic and social regulation – and the power of the administrative state – in recent history.”

We note how, at the federal level, bills are being floated with titles like the “Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act” and the “Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act,” which would introduce far-reaching regulations requiring AI innovators to reveal more about how their algorithms work or even hold them liable if their algorithms are thought to be amplifying hateful or extremist content. Other proposed measures like the “Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act” and the “Online Consumer Protection Act” would demand greater algorithmic transparency as it relates to social media content moderation policies and procedures. Finally, measures like the “Kids Online Safety Act” would require audits of algorithmic recommendation systems that supposed targeted or harmed children. Algorithmic regulation is also creeping into proposed privacy regulations, such as the “American Data Protection and Privacy Act of 2022.”

And then there are all the state laws–many of which have been pushed by conservatives–that would mandate “algorithmic transparency” for social media content moderation in the name of countering supposed viewpoint bias. Bills in Florida and Texas take this approach. Meanwhile, conservatives in Congress Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) push for bills like the “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act” that requires large tech companies undergo external audits proving that their algorithms and content-moderation techniques are politically unbiased. It’s an open invitation to regulators and trial lawyers to massively regulate technology and speech under the guise of “algorithmic fairness.” Countless left-leaning law professors and European officials have already proposed a comprehensive algorithmic audit apparatus to regulate innovators in every sector.

It’s the rise of the Code Cops. If we continue down this path, it ends with a complete rejection of the permissionless innovation ethos that made America’s information technology sector a global powerhouse. Instead, we’ll be stuck with the very worst type of “Mother, May I” precautionary principle-based regulatory regime that will be imposing the equivalent of occupational licensing requirements for coders.

If code is speech, algorithms are as well. Defenders of innovation freedom need to step up and prepare for the fight to come. [See my earlier essay, “AI Eats the World: Preparing for the Computational Revolution and the Policy Debates Ahead.”] Chilson and I outline the broad contours of the battle for freedom of speech and the freedom to innovation that is brewing. It will be the most important technology policy issue of the next ten years. I hope you take the time to read our new essay and understand why. And below you will find a few dozen more essay on the same topic if you’d like to dig even deeper.

Additional Reading :

 

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/11/06/tech-regulation-will-increasingly-be-driven-through-the-prism-of-algorithmic-fairness/feed/ 4 77056 AI Eats the World: Preparing for the Computational Revolution and the Policy Debates Ahead https://techliberation.com/2022/09/12/ai-eats-the-world-preparing-for-the-computational-revolution-and-the-policy-debates-ahead/ https://techliberation.com/2022/09/12/ai-eats-the-world-preparing-for-the-computational-revolution-and-the-policy-debates-ahead/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2022 23:52:26 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77039

[Cross-posted from Medium.]

The Coming Computational Revolution

Thomas Edison once spoke of how electricity was a “field of fields.” This is even more true of AI, which is ready to bring about a sweeping technological revolution. In Carlota Perez’s influential 2009 paper on “Technological Revolutions and Techno-economic Paradigms,” she defined a technological revolution “as a set of interrelated radical breakthroughs, forming a major constellation of interdependent technologies; a cluster of clusters or a system of systems.” To be considered a legitimate technological revolution, Perez argued, the technology or technological process must be “opening a vast innovation opportunity space and providing a new set of associated generic technologies, infrastructures and organisational principles that can significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of all industries and activities.” In other words, she concluded, the technology must have “the power to bring about a transformation across the board.”

Expanding Our Skillset

Thus, AI (and AI policy) is multi-dimensional, amorphous, and ever-changing. It has many layers and complexities. This will require public policy analysts and institutions to reorient their focus and develop new capabilities.

Mapping the AI Policy Terrain: Broad vs. Narrow

Beyond talent development, the other major challenge is issue coverage. How can we cover all the AI policy bases? There are two general categories of AI concerns, and supporters of free markets need to be prepared to engage on both battlefields.

Confronting the Formidable Resistance to Change

Finally, free-market analysts and organizations must prepare to defend the general concept of progress through technological change as AI becomes a central social, economic, and legal battleground — both domestically and globally. Every technological revolution involves major social and economic disruptions and gives rise to intense efforts to defend the status quo and block progress. As Perez concludes, “the profound and wide-ranging changes made possible by each technological revolution and its techno-economic paradigm are not easily assimilated; they give rise to intense resistance.”

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/09/12/ai-eats-the-world-preparing-for-the-computational-revolution-and-the-policy-debates-ahead/feed/ 3 77039 AI Governance “on the Ground” vs “on the Books” https://techliberation.com/2022/08/24/ai-governance-on-the-ground-vs-on-the-books/ https://techliberation.com/2022/08/24/ai-governance-on-the-ground-vs-on-the-books/#respond Wed, 24 Aug 2022 15:14:56 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77028

[Cross-posted from Medium]

There are two general types of technological governance that can be used to address challenges associated with artificial intelligence (AI) and computational sciences more generally. We can think of these as “on the ground” (bottom-up, informal “soft law”) governance mechanisms versus “on the books” (top-down, formal “hard law”) governance mechanisms.

Unfortunately, heated debates about the latter type of governance often divert attention from the many ways in which the former can (or already does) help us address many of the challenges associated with emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, and robotics. It is important that we think harder about how to optimize these decentralized soft law governance mechanisms today, especially as traditional hard law methods are increasingly strained by the relentless pace of technological change and ongoing dysfunctionalism in the legislative and regulatory arenas.

On the Grounds vs. On the Books Governance

Let’s unpack these “on the ground” and “on the books” notions a bit more. I am borrowing these descriptors from an important 2011 law review article by Kenneth A. Bamberger and Deirdre K. Mulligan, which explored the distinction between what they referred to as “Privacy on the Books and on the Ground.” They identified how privacy best practices were emerging in a decentralized fashion thanks to the activities of corporate privacy officers and privacy associations who helped formulate best practices for data collection and use.

The growth of privacy professional bodies and non­profit organizations — especially the International Association of Privacy Profession­als (IAPP) — helped better formalize privacy best practices by establishing and certifying internal champions to uphold key data-handling principles with organizations. By 2019, the IAPP had over 50,000 trained members globally, and its numbers keep swelling. Today, it is quite common to find Chief Privacy Officers throughout the corporate, governmental, and non-profit world.

These privacy professionals work together and in conjunction with a wide diversity of other players to “bake-in” widely-accepted information collection/ use practices within all these organizations. With the help of IAPP and other privacy advocates and academics, these professionals also look to constantly refine and improve their standards to account for changing circumstances and challenges in our fast-paced data economy. They also look to ensure that organizations live up to commitments they have made to the public or even governments to abide by various data-handling best practices.

Soft Law vs. Hard Law

These “on the ground” efforts have helped usher in a variety of corporate social responsibility best practices and provide a flexible governance model that can be a compliment to, or sometimes even a substitute for, formal “on the books” efforts. We can also think of this as the difference between soft law and hard law.

Soft law refers to agile, adaptable governance schemes for emerging technology that create substantive expectations and best practices for innovators without regulatory mandates. Soft law can take many forms, including guidelines, best practices, agency consultations & workshops, multistakeholder initiatives, and other experimental types of decentralized, non-binding commitments and efforts.

Soft law has become a bit of a gap-filler in the U.S. as hard law efforts fail for various reasons. The most obvious explanations for why the role of hard law governance has shrunk is that it’s just very hard for law to keep up with fast-moving technological developments today. This is known as the pacing problem. Many scholars have identified how the pacing problem gives rise to a “governance gap” or “competency trap” for policymakers because, just as quickly as they are coming to grips with new technological developments, other technologies are emerging quickly on their heels.

Think of modern technologies — especially informational and computational technologies — like a series of waves that come flowing in to shore faster and faster. As soon as one wave crests and then crashes down, another one comes right after it and soaks you again before you’ve had time to recover from the daze of the previous ones hitting you. In a world of combinatorial innovation, in which technologies build on top of one another in a symbiotic fashion, this process becomes self-reinforcing and relentless. For policymakers, this means that just when they’ve worked their way up one technological learning curve, the next wave hits and forces them to try to quickly learn about and prepare for the next one that has arrived. Lawmakers are often overwhelmed by this flood of technological change, making it harder and harder for policies to get put in place in a timely fashion — and equally hard to ensure that any new or even existing policies stay relevant as all this rapid-fire innovation continues.

Legislative dysfunctionalism doesn’t help. Congress has a hard time advancing bills on many issues, and technical matters often get pushed to the bottom of the priorities list. The end result is that Congress has increasingly become a non-actor on tech policy in the U.S. Most of the action lies elsewhere.

What’s Your Backup Plan?

This means there is a powerful pragmatic case for embracing soft law efforts that can at least provide us with some “on the ground” governance efforts and practices. Increasingly, soft law is filling the governance gap because hard law is failing for a variety of reasons already identified. Practically speaking, even if you are dead set on imposing a rigid, top-down, technocratic regulatory regime on any given sector or technology, you should at least have a backup plan in mind if you can’t accomplish that.

This is why privacy governance in the United States continues to depend heavily on such soft law efforts to fill the governance vacuum after years of failed attempts to enact a formal federal privacy law. While many academics and others continue to push for such an over-arching data handling law, bottom-up soft law efforts have played an important role in balancing privacy and innovation.

In a similar way, “on the ground” governance efforts are already flourishing for artificial intelligence and machine learning as policymakers continue to very slowly consider whether new hard law initiatives are wise or even possible. For example, congressional lawmakers have been considering a federal regulatory framework for driverless cars for the past several sessions of Congress. Many people in Congress and in academic circles agree that a federal framework is needed, if for no other reason than to preempt the much-dreaded specter of a patchwork of inconsistent state and local regulatory policies. With so much bipartisan agreement out there on driverless car legislation, it would seem like a federal bill would be a slam dunk. For that reason, year in and year out, people always predict: this is the year we’ll get driverless car legislation! And yet, it never happens due to a combination of special interest opposition from unions and trial lawyers, in addition to the pacing problem issue and Congress focusing its limited attention on other issues.

This is also already true for algorithmic regulation. We hear lots of calls to do something, but it remains unclear what that something is or whether it will get done any time soon. If we could not get a privacy bill through Congress after at least a dozen years of major efforts, chances are that broad-based AI regulation is going to be equally challenging.

Soft Law for AI is Exploding

Thus, soft law will likely fill the governance gap for AI. It already is. I’m working on a new book that documents the astonishing array of soft law mechanisms already in place or being developed to address various algorithmic concerns. I can’t seem to finish the book because there is just so much going on related to soft law governance efforts for algorithmic systems. As Mark Coeckelbergh noted in his recent book on AI Ethics, there’s been an “avalanche of​ initiatives and policy documents” around AI ethics and best practices in recent years. It is a bit overwhelming, but the good news is that there is a lot of consistency in these governance efforts.

To illustrate, a 2019 survey by a group of researchers based in Switzerland analyzed 84 AI ethical frameworks and found “a global convergence emerging around five ethical principles (transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility and privacy).” A more recent 2021 meta-survey by a team of Arizona State University (ASU) legal scholars reviewed an astonishing 634 soft law AI programs that were formulated between 2016–2019. 36 percent of these efforts were initiated by governments, with the others being led by non-profits or private sector bodies. Echoing the findings from the Swiss researchers, the ASU report found widespread consensus among these soft law frameworks on values such as transparency and explainability, ethics/rights, security, and bias. This makes it clear that there is considerable consistency among ethical soft law frameworks in that most of them focus on a core set of values to embed within AI design. The UK-based Alan Turing Institute boils their list down to four “FAST Track Principles”: Fairness, Accountability, Sustainability, and Transparency.

The ASU scholars noted how ethical best practices for product design already influence developers today by creating powerful norms and expectations about responsible product design. “Once a soft law program is created, organizations may seek to enforce it by altering how their employees or representatives perform their duties through the creation and implementation of internal procedures,” they note. “Publicly committing to a course of action is a signal to society that generates expectations about an organization’s future actions.”

This is important because many major trade associations and individual companies have been formulating governance frameworks and ethical guidelines for AI development and use. For example, among large trade associations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the BSA | The Software Alliance, and ACT (The App Association) have all recently released major AI best practice guidelines. Notable corporate efforts to adopt guidelines for ethical AI practices include statements or frameworks by IBM, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and Sony, to just name a few. They are also creating internal champions to push AI ethics though either the appointment of Chief Ethical Officers, the creation of official departments, or both plus additional staff to guide the process of baking-in AI ethics by design.

Once again, there is remarkable consistency among these corporate statements in terms of the best practices and ethical guidelines they endorse. Each trade association or corporate set of guidelines align closely with the core values identified in the hundreds of other soft law frameworks that ASU scholars surveyed. These efforts go a long way toward helping to promote a culture of responsibility among leading AI innovators. We can think of this as the professionalization of AI best practices.

What Soft Law Critics Forget

Some will claim that “on the ground” soft law efforts are not enough, but they typically make two mistakes when saying so.

Their first mistake is thinking that hard law is practical or even optimal for fast-paced, highly mercurial AI and ML technologies. It’s not just that the pacing problem necessitates new thinking about governance. Critics fail to understand how hard law would likely significantly undermine algorithmic innovation because algorithmic systems can change by the minute and require a more agile and adaptive system of governance by their very nature.

This is a major focus of my book and I previously published a draft chapter from my book on “The Proper Governance Default for AI,” and another essay on “Why the Future of AI Will Not Be Invented in Europe.” These essays explain why a Precautionary Principle-oriented regulatory regime for algorithmic systems would stifle technological development, undermine entrepreneurialism, diminish competition and global competitive advantage, and even have a deleterious impact on our national security goals.

Traditional regulatory systems can be overly rigid, bureaucratic, inflexible, and slow to adapt to new realities. They focus on preemptive remedies that aim to predict the future, and future hypothetical problems that may not ever come about. Worse yet, administrative regulation generally preempts or prohibits the beneficial experiments that yield new and better ways of doing things. When innovators must seek special permission before they offer a new product or service, it raises the cost of starting a new venture and discourages activities that benefit society. We need to avoid that approach if we hope maximize the potential of AI-based technologies.

The second mistake that soft law critics make is that they fail to understand how many hard law mechanisms actually play a role in supporting soft law governance. AI applications already are regulated by a whole host of existing legal policies. If someone does something stupid or dangerous with AI systems, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to address “unfair and deceptive practices” of any sort. And state Attorneys General and state consumer protection agencies also routinely address unfair practices and continue to advance their own privacy and data security policies, some of which are often more stringent than federal law.

Meanwhile, several existing regulatory agencies in the U.S. possess investigatory and recall authority that allows them to remove products from the market when certain unforeseen problems manifest themselves. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) all possess broad recall authority that could be used to address risks that develop for many algorithmic or robotic systems. For example, NHTSA is currently using its investigative authority to evaluate Tesla’s claims about “full self-driving” technology and the agency has the power to take action against the company under existing regulations. Likewise, the FDA used its broad authority to crack down on genetic testing company 23andme many years ago. And CPSC and the FTC have broad authority to investigate claims made by innovators, and they’ve already used it. It’s not like our expansive regulatory state lacks considerable existing power to police new technology. If anything, the power of the administrative state is too broad and amorphous and it can be abused in certain instances.

Perhaps most importantly, our common law system can address other deficiencies with AI-based systems and applications using product defects law, torts, contract law, property law, and class action lawsuits. This is a better way of addressing risks compared to preemptive regulation of general-purpose AI technology because it at least allows the technologies to first develop and then see what actual problems manifest themselves. Better to treat innovators as innocent until proven guilty than the other way around.

There are other thorny issues that deserve serious policy consideration and perhaps even some new rules. But how risks are addressed matters deeply. Before we resort to heavy-handed, legalistic solutions for possible problems, we should exhaust all other potential remedies first.

In other words, “on the ground” soft law government mechanisms and ex post legal solutions should generally trump “ex ante (preemptive, precautionary) regulatory constraints. But we should look for ways to refine and improve soft law governance tools, perhaps through better voluntary certification and auditing regimes to hold developers to a high standard as it pertains to the important AI ethical practices we want them to uphold. This is the path forward to achieve responsible AI innovation without the heavy-handed baggage associated with more formalistic, inflexible, regulatory approaches that are ill-suited for complicated, rapidly-evolving computational and computing technologies.

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Related Reading on AI & Robotics

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/08/24/ai-governance-on-the-ground-vs-on-the-books/feed/ 0 77028 Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/ https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/#respond Fri, 29 Jul 2022 12:51:54 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77020

[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:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021 (and earlier)

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/feed/ 0 77020 My Forthcoming Book on Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Policy https://techliberation.com/2022/07/22/my-forthcoming-book-on-artificial-intelligence-robotics-policy/ Fri, 22 Jul 2022 18:13:14 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77014

I’m finishing up my next book, which is tentatively titled, “A Flexible Governance Framework for Artificial Intelligence.” I thought I’d offer a brief preview here in the hope of connecting with others who care about innovation in this space and are also interested in helping to address these policy issues going forward.

The goal of my book is to highlight the ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML), robotics, and the power of computational science are set to transform the world—and the world of public policy—in profound ways. As with all my previous books and research products, my goal in this book includes both empirical and normative components. The first objective is to highlight the tensions between emerging technologies and the public policies that govern them. The second is to offer a defense of a specific governance stance toward emerging technologies intended to ensure we can enjoy the fruits of algorithmic innovation.

AI is a transformational technology that is general-purpose and dual-use. AI and ML also build on top of other important technologies—computing, microprocessors, the internet, high-speed broadband networks, and data storage/processing systems—and they will become the building blocks for a great many other innovations going forward. This means that, eventually, all policy will involve AI policy and computational considerations at some level. It will become the most important technology policy issue here and abroad going forward.

The global race for AI supremacy has important implications for competitive advantage and other geopolitical issues. This is why nations are focusing increasing attention on what they need to do to ensure they are prepared for this next major technological revolution. Public policy attitudes and defaults toward innovative activities will have an important influence on these outcomes.

In my book, I argue that, if the United States hopes to maintain a global leadership position in AI, ML, and robotics, public policy should be guided by two objectives:

  1. Maximize the potential for innovation, entrepreneurialism, investment, and worker opportunities by seeking to ensure that firms and other organizations are prepared to compete at a global scale for talent and capital and that the domestic workforce is properly prepared to meet the same global challenges.
  2. Develop a flexible governance framework to address various ethical concerns about AI development or use to ensure these technologies benefit humanity, but work to accomplish this goal without undermining the goals set forth in the first objective.

The book primarily addresses the second of these priorities because getting the governance framework for AI right significantly improves the chances of successfully accomplishing the first goal of ensuring that the United States remains a leading global AI innovator.

I do a deep dive into the many different governance challenges and policy proposals that are floating out there today—both domestically and internationally. The most contentious of these issues involved the so-called “socio-algorithmic” concerns that are driving calls for comprehensive regulation today. Those include the safety, security, privacy, and discrimination risks that AI/ML technologies could pose for individuals and society.

These concerns 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.

Getting the balance right requires agile governance strategies and decentralized, polycentric approaches. There are many different values and complex trade-offs in play in these debates, all of which demand tailored responses. But this should not be done in an overly rigid way through complicated, inflexible, time-consuming regulatory mandates that preemptively curtail or completely constrain innovation opportunities. There’s no need to worry about the future if we can’t even build it first. AI innovation must not be treated as guilty until proven innocent.

The more agile and adaptive governance approach I outline in my book builds on the core principles typically recommended by those favoring precautionary principle-based regulation. That is, it is similarly focused on (1) “baking in” best practices and aligning AI design with widely-shared goals and values; and, (2) keeping humans “in the loop” at critical stages of this process to ensure that they can continue to guide and occasionally realign those values and best practices as needed. However, a decentralized governance approach to AI focuses on accomplishing these objectives in a more flexible, evolutionary fashion without the costly baggage associated with precautionary principle-based regulatory regimes.

The key to the decentralized approach is a diverse toolkit of so-called soft law governance solutions. Soft law refers to agile, adaptable governance schemes for emerging technology that create substantive expectations and best practices for innovators without regulatory mandates. Precautionary regulatory restraints will be necessary in some limited circumstances—particular for certain types of very serious existential risk—but most AI innovations should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.

When things do go wrong, many existing remedies are available, including a wide variety of common law solutions (torts, class actions, contract law, etc), recall authority possessed by many regulatory agencies, and various consumer protection policies and other existing laws. Moreover, the most effective solution to technological problems usually lies in more innovation, not less of it. It is only through constant trial and error that humanity discovers better and safer ways of satisfying important wants and needs.

The book has six chapters currently, although I am toying with adding back in two other chapters (on labor market issues and industrial policy proposals) that I finished but then cut to keep the theme of the book more tightly focused on social and ethical considerations surrounding AI and robotics.

Here are the summaries of the current six chapters in the manuscript:

  • Chapter 1: Understanding AI & Its Potential Benefits – Defining the nature and scope of artificial intelligence and its many components and related subsectors is complicated and this fact creates many governance challenges. But getting AI governance right is vital because these technologies offer individuals and society meaningful improvements in living standards across multiple dimensions.
  • Chapter 2: The Importance of Policy Defaults for Innovation Culture – Every technology policy debate involves a choice between two general defaults: the precautionary principle and the proactionary principle or “permissionless innovation.” Setting the initial legal default for AI technologies closer to the green light of permissionless innovation will enable greater entrepreneurialism, investment, and global competitiveness.
  • Chapter 3: Decentralized Governance for AI: A Framework – The process of embedding ethics in AI design is an ongoing, iterative process influenced by many forces and factors. There will be much trial and error when devising ethical guidelines for AI and hammering out better ways of keeping these systems aligned with human values. A top-down, one-size-fits-all regulatory framework for AI is unwise. A more decentralized, polycentric governance approach is needed—nationally and globally. [This chapter is the meat of the book and several derivative articles will be spun out of it beginning with a report on algorithmic auditing and AI impact assessments.]
  • Chapter 4: The US Governance Model for AI So Far – U.S. digital technology and ecommerce sectors have enjoyed a generally “permissionless” policy environment since the early days of the Internet, and this has greatly benefited our innovation and global competitiveness. While AI has thus far been governed by a similar “light-touch” approach, many academics and policymakers are now calling for aggressive regulation of AI rooted in a precautionary principle-oriented mindset, which threatens to derail a great deal of AI innovation.
  • Chapter 5: The European Regulatory Model & the Costs of Precaution by Default – Over the past quarter century, the European Union has taken a more aggressive approach to digital technology and data regulation, and is now advancing several new comprehensive regulatory frameworks, including an AI Act. The E.U.’s heavy-handed regulatory regime, which is rooted in the precautionary principle, discouraged innovation and investment across the continent in the past and will continue to do so as it grows to encompass AI technologies. The U.S. should reject this model and welcome European innovators looking to escape it.
  • Chapter 6: Existential Risks & Global Governance Issues around AI & Robotics – AI and robotics could give rise to certain global risks that warrant greater attention and action. But policymakers must be careful to define existential risk properly and understand how it is often the case that the most important solution to such risks is more technological innovation to overcome those problems. The greatest existential risk of all would be to block further technological innovation and scientific progress. Proposals to impose global bans or regulatory agencies are both unwise and unworkable. Other approaches, including soft law efforts, will continue to play a role in addressing global AI risks and concerns.

This book, which I hope to have out some time later this year, grows out of a large body of research I’ve done over the past decade. [Some of that work is listed down below.] AI, ML, robotics, and algorithmic policy issues will dominate my research focus and outputs over the next few years.

I look forward to doing my small part to help ensure that America builds on the track record of success it has enjoyed with the Internet, ecommerce, and digital technologies. Again, that stunning success story was built on wise policy choices that promoted a culture of creativity and innovation and rejected calls to hold on to past technological, economic, or legal status quos.

Will America rise to the challenge once again by adopting wise policies to facilitate the next great technological revolution? I’m ready for that fight. I hope you are, too, because it will be the most important technology policy battle of our lifetimes.

___________

Recent Essays & Papers on AI & Robotics Policy

]]> 77014 VIDEO: My London Talk about the Future of AI Governance https://techliberation.com/2022/06/13/video-my-london-talk-about-the-future-of-ai-governance/ https://techliberation.com/2022/06/13/video-my-london-talk-about-the-future-of-ai-governance/#comments Mon, 13 Jun 2022 09:29:50 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76999

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!

Additional Reading:

 

 

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/06/13/video-my-london-talk-about-the-future-of-ai-governance/feed/ 5 76999 New Paper on Privacy & Security Implications of the Internet of Things & Wearable Technology https://techliberation.com/2014/11/21/new-paper-on-privacy-security-implications-of-the-internet-of-things-wearable-technology/ https://techliberation.com/2014/11/21/new-paper-on-privacy-security-implications-of-the-internet-of-things-wearable-technology/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:23:31 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=74973

IoT paperThe Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released my latest working paper, “The Internet of Things and Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation.” The “Internet of Things” (IoT) generally refers to “smart” devices that are connected to both the Internet and other devices. Wearable technologies are IoT devices that are worn somewhere on the body and which gather data about us for various purposes. These technologies promise to usher in the next wave of Internet-enabled services and data-driven innovation. Basically, the Internet will be “baked in” to almost everything that consumers own and come into contact with.

Some critics are worried about the privacy and security implications of the Internet of Things and wearable technology, however, and are proposing regulation to address these concerns. In my new 93-page article, I explain why preemptive, top-down regulation would derail the many life-enriching innovations that could come from these new IoT technologies. Building on a recent book of mine, I argue that “permissionless innovation,” which allows new technology to flourish and develop in a relatively unabated fashion, is the superior approach to the Internet of Things.

As I note in the paper and my earlier book, if we spend all our time living in fear of the worst-case scenarios — and basing public policies on them — then best-case scenarios can never come about. As the old saying goes: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Precautionary principle-based regulation paralyzes progress and must be avoided.  We instead need to find constructive, “bottom-up” solutions to the privacy and security risks accompanying these new IoT technologies instead of top-down controls that would limit the development of life-enriching IoT innovations.

The better alternative is to deal with concerns creatively as they develop, using a balanced, layered approach  involving many different solutions, including: educational efforts, technological empowerment tools, social norms, public and watchdog pressure, industry best practices and self-regulation, transparency, torts and products liability law, and targeted enforcement of existing legal standards as needed.

Generally speaking, patience, humility, and forbearance by policymakers is crucial to allowing greater innovation and consumer choice in this arena. Importantly, policymakers should not forget that societal and individual adaptation will play a role here, just as it has during so many other turbulent technological transformations.

This article can be downloaded on my Mercatus Center page, on SSRN, or at Research Gate. I am hoping to find a law or policy journal interested in publishing this paper soon. If you with a journal and are interested, please contact me. [UPDATE 12/3/14: This paper has been accepted for publication in the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 21, Issue 6 (2015).]

Finally, if you are interested in this topic, you might want to flip through these slides I prepared for a presentation on this topic that I made at the Federal Communications Commission in September:

Additional reading:
]]> https://techliberation.com/2014/11/21/new-paper-on-privacy-security-implications-of-the-internet-of-things-wearable-technology/feed/ 5 74973 Slide Presentation: Policy Issues Surrounding the Internet of Things & Wearable Technology https://techliberation.com/2014/09/12/slide-presentation-policy-issues-surrounding-the-internet-of-things-wearable-technology/ https://techliberation.com/2014/09/12/slide-presentation-policy-issues-surrounding-the-internet-of-things-wearable-technology/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2014 16:04:09 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=74721

On Thursday, it was my great pleasure to present a draft of my forthcoming paper, “The Internet of Things & Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy & Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation,” at a conference that took place at the Federal Communications Commission on “Regulating the Evolving Broadband Ecosystem.” The 3-day event was co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Nebraska College of Law.

The 65-page working paper I presented is still going through final peer review and copyediting, but I posted a very rough first draft on SSRN for conference participants. I expect the paper to be released as a Mercatus Center working paper in October and then I hope to find a home for it in a law review. I will post the final version once it is released. [UPDATE:The final version of this working paper was released on November 19, 2014.]

In the meantime, however, I thought I would post the 46 slides I presented at the conference, which offer an overview of the nature of the Internet of Things and wearable technology, the potential economic opportunities that exist in this space, and the various privacy and security challenges that could hold this technological revolution back. I also outlined some constructive solutions to those concerns. I plan to be very active on these issues in coming months.

Additional Reading

 

 

 

]]> https://techliberation.com/2014/09/12/slide-presentation-policy-issues-surrounding-the-internet-of-things-wearable-technology/feed/ 3 74721 The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009 https://techliberation.com/2009/12/19/the-10-most-important-info-tech-policy-books-of-2009/ https://techliberation.com/2009/12/19/the-10-most-important-info-tech-policy-books-of-2009/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:04:06 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=23247

2009 was not as big of a year for Internet and information technology (“info-tech”) policy books as 2008 was, but there were still some notable titles released that offered interesting perspectives about the future of the Net and the impact the Digital Revolution is having on our lives, culture, and economy.  So, like last year, I figured I would throw together my list of the 10 most important info-tech policy books of the year.

book covers collage 2009First, let me repeat a few of the same caveats and disclaimers that I set forth last year.  What qualifies as an “important” info-tech policy book? Simply put, it’s a title that many people are currently discussing and that we will likely be referencing for many years to come.  However, I want to be clear that merely because a book appears on my list it does not necessarily mean I agree with everything said in it. In fact, as was the case in previous years, I found much with which to disagree in my picks for the most important books of 2009 and I find that the cyber-libertarianism I subscribe to has very few fans out there.

Another caveat: Narrowly-focused titles lose a few points on my list. For example, if a book deals mostly with privacy issues, copyright law, or antitrust policy, it does not exactly qualify as the same sort of “tech policy book” as other titles found on this list since it is a narrow exploration of just one set of issues with a bearing on technology policy.

With those caveats in mind, here are my choices for the Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009.

(1) Chris Anderson – Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Anderson FreeChris Anderson’s 2006 book The Long Tail will be remembered as one of the most influential tech policy books of the decade.  It changed the way we talk about the digital marketplace and it instantly garnered a huge audience outside of the nerdy world of Internet policy.  While Free: The Future of a Radical Price will forever live in the shadow of The Long Tail, it too is an important book and in many ways it is a much better one.

In The Long Tail, Anderson tried too hard to invent the latest business theory du jour, and in doing so he went much too far in proclaiming that, as the subtitle of the book argued, “the future of the business is selling less of more.”  That’s just not true. While there’s certainly a lot more action in the long tail than ever before since it is so much more accessible, that does not mean the entire future of business lies in “selling less of more.”  To the contrary, the fat head of the tail is just as profitable as ever.

Free certainly contains some of the flamboyance on display in The Long Tail, but Anderson has matured as a writer and is now far more willing to point out the limitations of his theories in a business sense.  He does a splendid job in Free of creating a taxonomy of free-oriented business models to guide discussions about these issues.  And he explains how “free” can be part of many different business models and strategies. His historical treatment of the issues is outstanding and includes many entertaining examples of how these “free” strategies have been used over time to offer innovative new goods and services.

The reason his book is important for Internet policy discussions is obvious: “free” is increasingly viewed as a threat to many existing companies, industry sectors, and traditional media business models.  For example, battles about the future of journalism and search engine indexing of news sites are obviously tied up with battles over “free.”  And, it goes without saying that the traditional entertainment industry business models are increasingly challenged by “free” as many struggle to adapt to the new realities of the online world, in which “free” (primarily advertising-supported  and “freemium” models) seems to be the only model with any legs.

Much like my top pick for 2008 book of the year, Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Net and How to Stop It, Chris Anderson’s Free is the most important information technology book of the year because it is the one we will still be talking about the most a decade from now.  However, unlike Zittrain’s book and thesis, which I think will be largely discredited in another ten years, Anderson’s book will likely be viewed as an important and lasting contribution to the field.

(2) Larry Downes – The Laws of Disruption: Chaos and Control in Your Virtual Future

Laws of Disruption Downes The Laws of Disruption is the closest thing you will find to a genuine cyber-libertarian manifesto these days.  But Downes isn’t a rigid ideologue; his skepticism of government regulation of the high-tech economy is based more on practical considerations and the fundamental “law of disruption”: “technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally.” Downes says this law is “a simple but unavoidable principle of modern life” and that it will have profound implications for the way businesses, government, and culture evolve going forward. “As the gap between the old world and the new gets wider,” he argues, “conflicts between social, economic, political, and legal systems” will intensify and “nothing can stop the chaos that will follow.” In this sense, The Laws of Disruption reads like an addendum to one of Alvin Toffler’s old books on technology and futurism in that Downes is essentially walking us through the practical consequences of life in a “post-industrial society.”

In terms of what it all means for public policy, Downes doesn’t so much fear legal and regulatory over-reach the way many cyber-libertarians do. Rather, he thinks most regulatory schemes just won’t work. In essence, he is a technological fatalist or consequentialist: Progress happens whether we like it or not, so get used to it!  Thus, the “laws of disruption” he articulates serve primarily as “Just-Don’t-Bother” warnings to over-eager government meddlers. “The best way to regulate innovation is to leave it alone,” he counsels.

In terms of structure, The Laws of Disruption resembles Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion by Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis, (which I reviewed here last year and named to my 2008 list). Both books survey a vast swath of territory — privacy, copyright, security, etc — and each chapter offers unique perspectives on each debate. In that sense, the book is useful to readers if for no other reason than you get a taste for how a wide variety of issues are playing out. Downes also owes much to Clayton M. Christensen and his seminal 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Like that book, The Laws of Disruption is a business book with a strong policy hook.  That is, both books focus on advice-dishing for companies and innovators looking to “stay ahead of the curve” in the midst of relentless, gut-wrenching technological change, but the books also include important lessons regarding the public policies that should govern high-tech sectors.

I highly recommended The Laws of Disruption and found it to be the most enjoyable of all the books I read this year.

(3) Dawn C. Nunziato – Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age

Virtual Freedom NunziatoDawn Nunziato is the perfect foil for Larry Downes. Her book is a manifesto for cyber-collectivism and “media access theory.”  (For those unfamiliar with media access theory, see my old essay: “Your Soapbox is My Soapbox! Thoughts on the Media Access Movement in General and the Media & Democracy Coalition’s ‘Bill of Media Rights’ in Particular.”)  She attempts to bring media access theory up to date by taking the ideas made famous by Jerome Barron, Owen Fiss, Cass Sunstein, and others, and applying them to the Internet and digital technologies.  Like those earlier legal thinkers, she argues for “an affirmative conception” of the First Amendment that would allow government to use the First Amendment to “facilitate the conditions necessary for democratic self-government” (whatever that means). Net neutrality regulation becomes one of many ways she would put this theory into action. Importantly, she would not stop with ISPs. She makes the case for extending the entire regulatory regime to Google and search platforms. Welcome to the Brave New World of the the FCC as the Federal Search Commission or Federal Cloud Commission!

Her attempt to cast Net neutrality as the Internet’s First Amendment is a grotesque contortion of the real First Amendment, and a complete betrayal of the Founder’s original intentions.  As I made clear in my recent essay on “Net Neutrality Regulation & the First Amendment,” the Internet’s First Amendment is the First Amendment, not some new, top-down, heavy-handed regulatory regime that puts the Federal Communications Commission in control of the Digital Economy. Her conception of the First Amendment would convert it from a shield against government control into a sword that the government could use as it wished. It would mean that “Congress shall make no law…” would suddenly be replaced by “Congress shall make whatever law it wants” so long as it serves some amorphous “public interest.” Can you say “tyranny of the majority”?

Regardless, event though I find her views to be morally repugnant and the antithesis of true digital freedom, Nunziato’s book is a concise articulation of that vision and it deserves everyone’s attention. It serves as a blueprint for where the Net neutrality wars are taking us.

(4) David Bollier – Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own

Viral Spiral BollierDavid Bollier’s Viral Spiral is the first major history of the “digital commons” / “free culture” movement, and despite my many person disagreements with him and this movement, it is an excellent treatment of the topic. Bollier surveys this growing intellectual movement from its early open source days to the rise of the Creative Commons and on into the present.  The cast of characters in this drama will be well-known to anyone involved in modern tech policy debates: Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, Yochai Benkler, et al.

There is absolutely no doubt that this intellectual movement is winning the war of ideas in cyberlaw front today, as I noted in a recent debate with Lessig and Zittrain over at Cato Unbound.  As a cyber-libertarian, I find myself occasionally at odds with these guys and this movement on a variety of policy issues, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying David Bollier’s treatment of this movement and these issues.

(5) David Post – In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace

Jefferson Moose PostDavid Post is one of the early intellectual giants in the field of cyberlaw. Back in the days when most of us were still just trying to get our 14.4 modems to work properly to get on Al Gore’s “Information Highway,” David Post was writing essays and law review articles that were a decade ahead of their time.  In particular, his work on Internet governance and jurisdictional matters was path-breaking, and much of it is updated and extended in Jefferson’s Moose.

I must admit, however, that I was hoping for a bit more from David in this book.  Beyond just being a first-rate intellectual in this space, he is also one of the few remaining defenders of “Internet exceptionalism,” and he has genuine cyber-libertarian leanings.  After waiting almost 10 years for David to wrap this thing up after he first told me about it back around 2000, I was thinking he might come up with the sort of cyber-libertarian manifesto I’ve always hoped he would write.  Although he fell a bit short in that regard, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good book. It is. You will enjoy it no matter what cyber-philosophy you subscribe to.

Read my entire review of Jefferson’s Moose here.

(6) Dennis Baron – A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution

A Better Pencil book coverBaron’s A Better Pencil is a splendid history of techno-pessimism and the endless battles about the impact of new technologies on life and learning, something I have written about here before in my essays on “Internet optimists vs. pessimists” (See: 1, 2, 3).   Baron notes that almost as soon as people learned to put chisel to stone and then quill to paper, a great debate began about the impact of new communications technology on culture and education. And that debate rages on today with a new generation of optimists and skeptics battling over the impact that computing, the Internet, and digital technologies have on our lives and on how we learn about the world.

Baron walks us through a litany of historical examples—the printing press, the telegraph, telephones, typewriters, pocket calculators, personal computers, word processors, webpages, blogs, social-networking sites, and more—and identifies the usual pattern: we greet each new technology with deep distrust and dire warnings, but in time we adapt to the new realities. Indeed, as a species, we have an unparalleled ability to learn new ways of doing things. We don’t always like technological change, and often we deeply resent or fear it, but in the end, we learn to live with it and eventually to embrace it.  With the rise of the Internet and digital technologies, we see this pattern unfolding once again. But Baron counsels patience and understanding instead of the sort f hysteria and backlash we see from the likes of Andrew Keen, Lee Siegel and others.  It’s a refreshing and uplifting perspective.

Highly recommended. See my complete review of Baron’s A Better Pencil over at the City Journal website.

(7) Mark Helprin – Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto

Digital Barbarism HelprinNo book has been more disappointing to me in recent memory than Mark Helprin’s Digital Barbarism. As someone who still finds a lot to defend in copyright law, I was excited when I learned that one of America’s most gifted authors–and the author of my favorite literary work of the late 20th century (A Soldier of the Great War)–was taking a crack defending copyright in a short manifesto.

Alas, as I argued in my review of the book for National Review, while Helprin occasionally rises to great heights in his defense of copyright, he too often sinks to lamentable lows–by resorting to the same unbecoming rhetorical tactics used by the “cyber-mob” he seeks to condemn. Indeed, his book is filled with gratuitous vitriol and neo-Luddite ramblings about the Internet and Information Age that severely detract from his defense of copyright. Channeling the ghost of the late social critic Neil Postman, Helprin’s critique of copyright skeptics quickly turns into an all-out assault on modern digital culture and cyberspace. He argues that we are witnessing “the decline of culture,” the “mechanization of the soul,” our “intellectual and spiritual destruction,” and the rise of a movement of “wacked-out muppets led by little professors in glasses” that “threatens in a decade or two to dissolve the accomplishments of millennia, reordering the ways in which we think, write, and communicate.” And it just gets worse from there. Much like recent rants by Andrew Keen and Lee Siegel, Helprin speaks repeatedly about the “surrender of human nature” to “the machine revolution” and the corresponding need to “control the machine.”

How a man who has penned some of the most beautiful prose in modern times could craft an off-the-rails screed of this magnitude remains incomprehensible  to me.  What’s worse is that he set back the cause of defending what’s best about copyright in the process. Luckily for Helprin, there’s plenty of hysteria on the other side, as the next book on my list makes clear.

(8) William Patry – Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars

Moral Panics PatryBill Patry is an angry man. He is the anti-Helprin. The vitriol that Helprin directs against the copyright-haters is reversed in this screed and turned against not just copyright holders and content creators, but against the entire capitalist system. Patry, who is the author of a multi-volume treatise on copyright law, has done the intellectual equivalent of “going postal” within his own intellectual community. He has turned his intellectual guns on anyone and everyone who has ever had a kind word to say about copyright. He cannot find one nice thing to say about copyright or anyone who defends copyright in this book. Not one.

What’s most ironic about the book is that Patry seems utterly oblivious to the fact that in the process of critiquing the inflammatory rhetoric and “misuse of language” occasionally emanating from some copyright defenders, he goes completely over the top himself and engages in even more egregious rhetorical flourishes. Choice gems from the book include: “digital guillotines,” copyright as “cancer,” “copyright dwarves,” Maoism, the “sins” of copyright, “socialism for the wealthy,” and a comparison of the DMCA to “Mussolini’s Fascist Italy.”  Apparently when it comes to the “misuse of language,” Patry believes that two wrongs make a right.

And then there is his mind-boggling conclusion that: “I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries.”  Apparently, every great book, every great movie, every great video game, and ever great musical composition of the past century was done solely for the love of it all. Copyright had apparently had absolutely nothing to do with it according to Patry’s logic. That is just an astonishingly naive notion, in my opinion. Apparently this man’s hatred for copyright-related industries is so intense that it has blinded him to any potentially positive effects of copyright law. If nothing else, it would have been nice to see Mr. Patry address how it is that America is the world’s leading creator and exporter of creative arts.  Certainly copyright law must have had something to do with that!

Chapter 5 of his book makes it clear that Patry’s critique of copyright is actually rooted in a much deeper suspicion about capitalism itself.  He speaks of “the myth of economic freedom” and claims that “free market fundamentalism… destroyed much of the world’s economies.”  He then launches into a neo-Marxist critique of property rights more generally, treating property as a zero-sum game of winners and losers.  At times it all begins to sound like a rant from an old Herbert Marcuse book with questions like: “why are the interests of one social group favored over another?” and “What social objective is being furthered by the decision to privilege one group over another?”  And there’s all sorts of talk about “regulation in the public interest,” which I have critique as a meaningless non-standard here many times before.

In the end, Patry’s book will–along with Helprin’s–long be remember as marking the nadir in the “copyright wars;” a moment when grown men of great intelligence decided to trade in their integrity for the opportunity to engage in below-the-belt rhetorical cheap shots that would typically be reserved for college student debating politics over beers and shots at two in the morning.  They should both be ashamed of themselves.

(9) Gary Reback – Free the Market!  Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive

Reback book coverGary Reback’s over-the-top ode to antitrust as the great savior of capitalism reads like an extended love letter. As I noted in my lengthy critique of his book, his fairy tale narrative of antitrust as the savior of capitalism is hopelessly one-sided, and his recommendations to expand antitrust enforcement wouldn’t “Free the Market” as he argues in his book’s shameful title, but would instead wrap it in regulatory chains.

He repeatedly insults the intelligence of the reader by claiming antitrust is supposedly not a form of economic regulation and that is can only have beneficial effects. He wants antitrust officials to intervene early and often in high-tech markets to guide markets to a supposedly better place. Reback considers just about everything “the Chicago School” taught us to be antitrust apostasy and he would like to erase four decades worth of economic literature and evidence that suggests antitrust law is a form of economic regulation and does have unintended consequences that often hurt consumer welfare.  Even if you are not an inherent antitrust skeptic like me, I think most people would hope for a better treatment of the other side of this story.

Read my lengthy review of Reback’s Strangle Free the Market here.

(10) tie – Tyler Cowen – Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World and John Freeman – The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox

Create Your Own EconomyOK, so I just couldn’t figure out which of these two to cut from the list so I took the easy way out by having them tie for the last slot!  In this case, however, there’s another reason it makes sense for both of them to round out the list: Both Freeman and Cowen explore how humans are coping with information overload–albeit from two very different perspectives.

As I noted in my lengthy essay on the topic earlier this year, Cowen is an unrepentant optimist. He believes humans have the ability to adapt to new technological realities and a world of information abundance. In fact, Cowen argues, new tools and information gathering and processing technologies actually “lengthens our attention spans in another way, namely by allowing greater specialization of knowledge.”

The Tyranny of EmailJohn Freeman, by contrast, wants us all to take a high-tech time out. Like other Internet skeptics, he is worried that cyberspace and digital technologies are reshaping humanity–and not for the better. “If we are to step off this hurtling machine, we must reassert principles that have been lost in the blur,” he argues. “It is time to launch a manifesto for a slow communication movement, a push back against the machines and the forces that encourage us to remain connected to them.”

Unlike most other Internet pessimists, however, Freeman’s tone is more measured and his recommendations more reasonable.  Of course, it helps that he is magical wordsmith. Even if you find yourself disagreeing with many of his ultimate conclusions–as I did–you should read The Tyranny of E-Mail for a lesson in how to construct an argument and to appreciate the gift of fine writing. It’s easily the best tract by any Net skeptic since Nick Carr’s The Big Switch, and a much better one in many ways. It will force you to ask tough questions about the impact of the Information Age on you and the world around you.  Nonetheless, I remain an unrepentant techno-optimist (albeit a pragmatic one)!

Honorable Mentions: Here are a couple of other books that I couldn’t fit on my list but that you might want to also consider adding to your bookshelf:

Please let me know what titles might be missing from this list and which books you think are the best of the year.

And speaking of bookshelves, here’s my Shelfari digital bookshelf in case anyone is interested. If you hadn’t figured it out yet, I am a bit of book nerd!  My life is spent swimming through oceans of paper.  My friends often ask me, “How can you spend so much time reading?” My question back to them is: “How can you not?”

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