Hitting the Books: Why AI needs regulation and how we can do it

 

The burgeoning AI industry has barrelled clean past the "move fast" portion of its development, right into the part where we "break things" — like society! Since the release of ChatGPT last November, generative AI systems have taken the digital world by storm, finding use in everything from machine coding and industrial applications to game design and virtual entertainment. It's also quickly been adopted for illicit purposes like scaling spam email operations and creating deepfakes.

That's one technological genie we're never getting back in its bottle so we'd better get working on regulating it, argues Silicon Valley–based author, entrepreneur, investor, and policy advisor, Tom Kemp, in his new book, Containing Big Tech: How to Protect Our Civil Rights, Economy, and Democracy. In the excerpt below, Kemp explains what form that regulation might take and what its enforcement would mean for consumers.