Regulating Smart Software: Let Us Form a Committee and Get Industry Advisors to Help
September 1, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
The Boston Globe published what I thought was an amusing “real” news story about legislators and smart software. I know. I know. I am entering oxymoron land. The article is “The US Regulates Cars, Radio, and TV. When Will It Regulate AI? A number of passages received True Blue check marks.
A person living off the grid works to make his mobile phone deliver generative content to solve the problem of … dinner. Thanks, MidJourney. You did a Stone Age person but you would not generate a street person. How helpful!
Let me share two passages and then offer a handful of observations.
How about this statement attributed to Microsoft’s Brad Smith. He is the professional who was certain Russia organized 1,000 programmers to figure out the SolarWinds’ security loopholes. Yes, that Brad Smith. The story quotes him as saying:
“We should move quickly,” Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, which launched an AI-powered version of its search engine this year, said in May. “There’s no time for waste or delay,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has said. “Let’s get ahead of this,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.
Microsoft moved fast. I think the reason was to make Google look stupid. Both of these big outfits know that online services aggregate and become monopolistic. Microsoft wants to be the AI winner. Microsoft is not spending extra time helping elected officials understand smart software or the stakes on the digital table. No way.
The second passage is:
Historically, regulation often happens gradually as a technology improves or an industry grows, as with cars and television. Sometimes it happens only after tragedy.
Please, read the original “real” news story for Captain Obvious statements. Here are a few observations:
- Smart software is moving along at a reasonable clip. Big bucks are available to AI outfits in Germany and elsewhere. Something like 28 percent of US companies are fiddling with AI. Yep, even those raising chickens have AI religion.
- The process of regulation is slow. We have a turtle and a hare situation. Nope, the turtle loses unless an exogenous power kills the speedy bunny.
- If laws were passed, how would one get fast action to apply them? How is the FTC doing? What about the snappy pace of the CDC in preparing for the next pandemic?
Net net: Yes, let’s understand AI.
Stephen E Arnold, September 1, 2023.
The statement aligns with my experience.
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