How Best To Regulate Artificial Intelligence

Insights from governing complex markets can inform Al regulation using partitions, transparency, control points and accountability

- Sanjeev Sanyal, Chirag Dudani

Artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded in capability in recent years, offering unprecedented advances in fields such as computer vision, language processing, robotics and more. However, the speed of AI development has also raised alarms about potential risks from uncontrolled system propagation. As AI’s capability grows, calls for regulation have increased to ensure safety, accountability and transparency. Unfortunately, standard regulatory approaches centred on ex-ante impact analysis and risk assessment are unlikely to work.

While promising immense societal benefits, the uncontrolled growth of AI presents risks ranging from systemic breakdowns to loss of privacy and agency. One danger is the potential for “runaway AI” that recursively self-improves beyond human control. Once advanced enough to reinvent itself without human input, its objectives could quickly become misaligned from human welfare. Integrated into critical infrastructure, compromised AI could also wreak havoc by disrupting utilities such as power grids and telecommunications. Malevolent systems could hack interconnected grids, causing cascading failures. Further risks arise from AI-driven cyberattacks compromising national security systems, or autonomous weapons unleashed in warfare. Unchecked surveillance presents threats of AI continuously monitoring individuals to predict and manipulate behaviours, even generating false simulated realities.