The writer is international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and serves as special adviser to Margrethe Vestager
Tech companies recognise that the race for AI dominance is decided not only in the marketplace but also in Washington and Brussels. Rules governing the development and integration of their AI products will have an existential impact on them, but currently remain up in the air. So executives are trying to get ahead and set the tone, by arguing that they are best placed to regulate the very technologies they produce. AI might be novel, but the talking points are recycled: they are the same ones Mark Zuckerberg used about social media and Sam Bankman-Fried offered regarding crypto. Such statements should not distract democratic lawmakers again.
Imagine the chief executive of JPMorgan explaining to Congress that because financial products are too complex for lawmakers to understand, banks should decide for themselves how to prevent money laundering, enable fraud detection and set liquidity to loan ratios. He would be laughed out of the room. Angry constituents would point out how well self-regulation panned out in the global financial crisis. From big tobacco to big oil, we have learnt the hard way that businesses cannot set disinterested regulations. They are neither independent nor capable of creating countervailing powers to their own.