Adam Thierer's Blog, page 3
March 11, 2023
US Chamber AI Commission Launches
This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Commission on Artificial Intelligence Competitiveness, Inclusion, and Innovation (AI Commission) released a major report on the policy considerations surrounding AI, machine learning (ML) and algorithmic systems. The 120-page report concluded that “AI technology offers great hope for increasing economic opportunity, boosting incomes, speeding life science research at reduced costs, and simplifying the lives of consumers.” It was my honor to serve as one of the commissioners on the AI Commission and contribute to the report.
Over at the R Street Institute blog, I offer a quick summary of the major findings and recommendations from the report and argue that, along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s recently released AI Risk Management Framework, the AI Commission report offers, “a constructive, consensus-driven framework for algorithmic governance rooted in flexibility, collaboration and iterative policymaking. This represents the uniquely American approach to AI policy that avoids the more heavy-handed regulatory approaches seen in other countries and it can help the United States again be a global leader in an important new technological field,” I conclude. Check out the blog post and the full AI Commission report if you are following debates of algorithmic policy issues. There’s lot of important material in there.
For more info on AI policy developments, check out my running list of research on AI, ML robotics policy.
February 10, 2023
7 AI Policy Issues to Watch in 2023 and Beyond
In my latest R Street Institute blog post, “Mapping the AI Policy Landscape Circa 2023: Seven Major Fault Lines,” I discuss the big issues confronting artificial intelligence and machine learning in the coming year and beyond. I note that the AI regulatory proposals are multiplying fast and coming in two general varieties: broad-based and targeted. Broad-based algorithmic regulation would address the use of these technologies in a holistic fashion across many sectors and concerns. By contrast, targeted algorithmic regulation looks to address specific AI applications or concerns. In the short-term, it is more likely that targeted or “sectoral” regulatory proposals have a chance of being implemented.
I go on to identify seven major issues of concern that will drive these policy proposals. They include:
1) Privacy and Data Collection
2) Bias and Discrimination
3) Free Speech and Disinformation
4) Kids’ Safety
5) Physical Safety and Cybersecurity
6) Industrial Policy and Workforce Issues
7) National Security and Law Enforcement Issues
Of course, each of these issues includes many sub-issues and nuanced concerns. But I also noted that “this list only scratches the surface in terms of the universe of AI policy issues.” Algorithmic policy considerations are now being discussed in many other fields, including education, insurance, financial services, energy markets, intellectual property, retail and trade, and more. I’ll be rolling out a new series of essays examining all these issues throughout the year.
But, as I note in concluding my new essay, the danger of over-reach exists with early regulatory efforts:
AI risks deserve serious attention, but an equally serious risk exists that an avalanche of fear-driven regulatory proposals will suffocate different life-enriching algorithmic innovations. There is a compelling interest in ensuring that AI innovations are developed and made widely available to society. Policymakers should not assume that important algorithmic innovations will just magically come about; our nation must get its innovation culture right if we hope to create a better, more prosperous future.
America needs a flexible governance approach for algorithmic systems that avoids heavy-handed, top-down controls as a first-order solution. “There is no use worrying about the future if we cannot even invent it first,” I conclude.
Additional Reading
Adam Thierer, “ Artificial Intelligence Primer: Definitions, Benefits & Policy Challenges ,” Medium, December 2, 2022.Neil Chilson & Adam Thierer, “ The Coming Onslaught of ‘Algorithmic Fairness’ Regulations ,” Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society, November 2, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ We Really Need To ‘Have a Conversation’ About AI … or Do We ?” Discourse, October 6, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ How the Embedding of AI Ethics Works in Practice & How It Can Be Improved ,” Medium, September 22, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ No Goldilocks Formula for Content Moderation in Social Media or the Metaverse, But Algorithms Still Help ,” Medium, September 13, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ AI Eats the World: Preparing for the Computational Revolution and the Policy Debates Ahead ,” Medium, September 10, 2022.Adam Thierer, “‘ Running Code and Rough Consensus’ for AI: Polycentric Governance in the Algorithmic Age ,” Medium, September 1, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ AI Governance ‘on the Ground’ vs ‘on the Books ,’” Medium, August 19, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ Why the Future of AI Will Not Be Invented in Europe ,” Technology Liberation Front, August 1, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ Existential Risks & Global Governance Issues around AI & Robotics ,” [DRAFT CHAPTER, July 2022].Adam Thierer, “ How Science Fiction Dystopianism Shapes the Debate over AI & Robotics ,” Discourse, July 26, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ Why is the US Following the EU’s Lead on Artificial Intelligence Regulation ?” The Hill, July 21, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ Algorithmic Auditing and AI Impact Assessments: The Need for Balance ,” Medium, July 13, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ The Proper Governance Default for AI ,” Medium, May 26, 2022.Adam Thierer, “ What I Learned about the Power of AI at the Cleveland Clinic ,” Medium, May 6, 2022.Adam Thierer, Governing Emerging Technology in an Age of Policy Fragmentation and Disequilibrium , American Enterprise Institute (April 2022).February 9, 2023
Studies Document Growing Cost of EU Privacy Regulations
[Originally published on Medium on 2/5/2022]
In an earlier essay, I explored “Why the Future of AI Will Not Be Invented in Europe” and argued that, “there is no doubt that European competitiveness is suffering today and that excessive regulation plays a fairly significant role in causing it.” This essay summarizes some of the major academic literature that leads to that conclusion.
Since the mid-1990s, the European Union has been layering on highly restrictive policies governing online data collection and use. The most significant of the E.U.’s recent mandates is the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation established even more stringent rules related to the protection of personal data, the movement thereof, and limits what organizations can do with data. Data minimization is the major priority of this system, but there are many different types of restrictions and reporting requirements involved in the regulatory scheme. This policy framework also has ramifications for the future of next-generation technologies, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, which rely on high-quality data sets to improve their efficacy.
Whether or not the E.U.’s complicated regulatory regime has actually resulted in truly meaningful privacy protections for European citizens relative to people in other countries remains open to debate. It is very difficult to measure and compare highly subjective values like privacy across countries and cultures. This makes benefit-cost analysis for privacy regulation extremely challenging — especially on the benefits side of the equation.
What is no longer up for debate, however, is the cost side of the equation and the question of what sort of consequences the GDPR has had on business formation, competition, investment, and so on. On these matters, standardized metrics exist and the economic evidence is abundantly clear: the GDPR has been a disaster for Europe.
Summary of Major Studies on Impact of EU Data Regulation
Consider the impact of E.U. data controls on business startups and market structure. GDPR and other regulations greatly limit the flow of data to innovative upstarts who need it most to compete, leaving only the largest companies who can afford to comply to control most of the market. Benjamin Mueller of ITIF notes that it is already the case that just “two of the world’s 30 largest technology firms by market capitalization are from the EU,” and only “5 of the 100 most promising AI startups are based in Europe,” while private funding of AI startups in Europe for 2020 ($4 billion) was dwarfed by US ($36 billion) and China ($25 billion). These issues are even more pressing as the E.U. looks to advance a new AI Act, which would layer on still more regulatory restrictions.
In concrete terms, this has meant that the E.U. came away from the digital revolution with “the complete absence of superstar companies,” argue competition policy experts Nicolas Petit and David Teece. There are no European versions of Microsoft, Google, or Apple, even though Europeans clearly demand the sort of products and services those US-based companies provide. Entrepreneurialism scholar Zoltan Acs asks: “What has been the outcome of E.U. policy in limiting entrepreneurial activity over recent decades?” His conclusion:
It is immediately clear… that the United States and China dominate the platform landscape. Based on the market value of top companies, the United States alone represents 66% of the world’s platform economy with 41 of the top 100 companies. European platform-based companies play a marginal role, with only 3% of market value.
Several recent studies have documented the costs associated with the GDPR and the E.U.’s heavy-handed approach to data flows more generally. Here is a rundown of some of the academic evidence and a summary of the major findings from these studies.
Damien Geradin, Theano Karanikioti, and Dimitrios Katsifis, “GDPR Myopia: How a Well-intended Regulation Ended up Favouring Large Online Platforms — The Case of Ad Tech,” European Competition Journal, December 18, 2020.
“There is a growing body of economic literature and commentary showing that the costs of implementing the GDPR benefit large online platforms, and that consent-based data collection gives a competitive advantage to firms offering a range of consumer-facing products compared to smaller market actors. This in turn increases concentration in a number of digital markets where access to data is important, by creating barriers to entry or encouraging market exit.” (p. 2–3)
Chinchih Chen, Carl Benedikt Frey, and Giorgio Presidente, “Privacy Regulation and Firm Performance: Estimating the GDPR Effect Globally,” Working Paper №2022–1.
“this paper examines how privacy regulation shaped firm performance in a large sample of companies across 61 countries and 34 industries. Controlling for firm and country-industry-year unobserved characteristics, we compare the outcomes of firms at different levels of exposure to EU markets, before and after the enforcement of the GDPR in 2018. We find that enhanced data protection had the unintended consequence of reducing the financial performance of companies targeting European consumers. Across our full sample, firms exposed to the regulation experienced a 8% decline in profits, and a 2% reduction in sales. An exception is large technology companies, which were relatively unaffected by the regulation on both performance measures. Meanwhile, we find the negative impact on profits among small technology companies to be almost double the average effect across our full sample. Following several robustness tests and placebo regressions, we conclude that the GDPR has had significant negative impacts on firm performance in general, and on small companies in particular.” (p. 1)
Garrett Johnson, Scott Shriver, and Samuel Goldberg, “Privacy & Market Concentration: Intended & Unintended Consequences of the GDPR,” January 31, 2022.
“We show that websites’ vendor use falls after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but that market concentration also increases among technology vendors that provide support services to websites. We collect panel data on the web technology vendors selected by more than 27,000 top websites internationally. The week after the GDPR’s enforcement, website use of web technology vendors falls by 15% for EU residents. Websites are more likely to drop smaller vendors, which increases the relative concentration of the vendor market by 17%. Increased concentration predominantly arises among vendors that use personal data such as cookies, and from the increased relative shares of Facebook and Google-owned vendors, but not from website consent requests. Though the aggregate changes in vendor use and vendor concentration dissipate by the end of 2018, we find that the GDPR impact persists in the advertising vendor category most scrutinized by regulators. Our findings shed light on potential explanations for the sudden drop and subsequent rebound in vendor usage.” (p. 1)
Michal Gal and Oshrit Aviv, “The Competitive Effects of the GDPR,” Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 2020.
“GDPR creates inherent tradeoffs between data protection and other dimensions of welfare, including competition and innovation. While some of these effects were acknowledged when constructing the legal data regime, many were disregarded. Furthermore, the magnitude and breadth of such effects may well constitute an unintended and unheeded welfare-reducing consequence. As this article shows, the GDPR limits competition and increases concentration in data and data-related markets, and potentially strengthens large data controllers. It also further reinforces the already existing barriers to data sharing in the EU, thereby potentially reducing data synergies that might result from combining different datasets controlled by separate entities.” (pp. 3–4)
Rebecca Janßen, Reinhold Kesler, Michael E. Kummer and Joel Waldfogel, “GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps,” NBER Working Paper 30028, May 2022.
“Using data on 4.1 million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019, we document that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps; and in the quarters following implementation, entry of new apps fell by half. We estimate a structural model of demand and entry in the app market. Comparing long-run equilibria with and without GDPR, we find that GDPR reduces consumer surplus and aggregate app usage by about a third. Whatever the privacy benefits of GDPR, they come at substantial costs in foregone innovation.”
Julia Schmitt, Klaus M. Miller, and Bernd Skiera, “The Impact of Privacy Laws on Online User Behavior,” HEC Paris Research Paper No MKG-2021–1437, November 2022.
“this paper empirically quantifies the effects of the enforcement of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on online user behavior over time, analyzing data from 6,286 websites spanning 24 industries during the 10 months before and 18 months after the GDPR’s enforcement in 2018. A panel differences estimator, with a synthetic control group approach, isolates the short- and long-term effects of the GDPR on user behavior. The results show that, on average, the GDPR’s effects on user quantity and usage intensity are negative; e.g., the numbers of total visits to a website decrease by 4.9% and 10% due to GDPR in respectively the short- and long-term. These effects could translate into average revenue losses of $7 million for e-commerce websites and almost $2.5 million for ad-based websites 18 months after GDPR. The GDPR’s effects vary across websites, with some industries even benefiting from it; moreover, more-popular websites suffer less, suggesting that the GDPR increased market concentration.”
Yu Zhao, Pinar Yildirim, and Pradeep Chintagunta, “Privacy Regulations and Online Search Friction: Evidence from GDPR,” August 2021.
“This paper investigates the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR for short) on consumers’ online browsing and search behavior using consumer panels from four countries, United Kingdom, Spain, United States, and Brazil. We find that after GDPR, a panelist exposed to GDPR submits 21.6% more search terms to access information and browses 16.3% more pages to access consumer goods and services compared to a non-exposed panelist, indicating higher friction in online search. The implications of increased friction are heterogeneous across firms: Bigger e-commerce firms see an increase in consumer traffic and more online transactions. The increase in the number of transactions at large websites is about 6 times the increase experienced by smaller firms. Overall, the post-GDPR online environment may be less competitive for online retailers and may be more difficult for EU consumers to navigate through.”
Paul C. Bauer, Frederic Gerdon, Florian Keusch, Frauke Kreuter, and David Vannette, “Did the GDPR Increase Trust in Data Collectors? Evidence from Observational and Experimental data,” May 2021.
“Privacy regulations should increase trust because they provide laws that increase transparency and allow for punishment in cases in which the trustee violates trust. […] We collected survey panel data in Germany around the implementation date and ran a survey experiment with a GDPR information treatment. Our observational and experimental evidence does not support the hypothesis that the GDPR has positively affected trust. This finding and our discussion of the underlying reasons are relevant for the wider research field of trust, privacy, and big data.”
Christian Peukert , Stefan Bechtold, Michail Batikas, and Tobias Kretschmer, “Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR,” Marketing Science, Vol. 41, №4, July-August 2022, pp. 746–768.
“We follow more than 110,000 websites and their third-party HTTP requests for 12 months before and 6 months after the GDPR became effective and show that websites substantially reduced their interactions with web technology providers. Importantly, this also holds for websites not legally bound by the GDPR. These changes are especially pronounced among less popular websites and regarding the collection of personal data. We document an increase in market concentration in web technology services after the introduction of the GDPR: Although all firms suffer losses, the largest vendor — Google — loses relatively less and significantly increases market share in important markets such as advertising and analytics. Our findings contribute to the discussion on how regulating privacy, artificial intelligence and other areas of data governance relate to data minimization, regulatory competition, and market structure.”
William Rinehart of the Center for Growth and Opportunity has compiled and summarized many additional studies that document the costs associated with restrictions on data, including many state privacy laws imposed in the United States.
“The Biggest Loser”: Innovation Culture Gone Wrong
Taken together, this evidence makes it clear that, “Well-meaning privacy laws can have the unintended consequence of penalizing smaller companies within technology markets.” It can also have broader geopolitical ramifications for continental competitive advantage and engagement between countries. Some have argued that the United Kingdom’s so-called “Brexit” from the EU can be viewed as not only an effort to reclaim its sovereignty but more specifically “to escape its crippling regulatory structure.” The E.U.’s approach to emerging technology regulation likely had some bearing on this. Acs argues that Britain’s move was logical, “because E.U. regulations were holding back the U.K.’s strong DPE (digital platform economy).” “If the United Kingdom was to realize its economic potential,” he says, “it had to extricate itself from the European Union,” due to the growing “dysfunctional E.U. bureaucracy.”
Can Europe turn things around? Most market watchers do not believe that the E.U. will be willing to change its regulatory course in such a way that the continent would suddenly become more open to data-driven innovation. As part of a Spring 2022 journal symposium, The International Economy asked 11 experts from Europe and the U.S. to consider where the European Union currently stood in “the global tech race.” The responses were nearly unanimous and bluntly summarized in the symposium’s title: “The Biggest Loser.” Several respondents observed how “Europe is considered to be lagging behind in the global tech race,” and “is unlikely to become a global hub of innovation.” “The future will not be invented in Europe,” another respondent concluded. Europe’s risk-averse culture and preference for meticulously detailed and highly precautionary regulatory regimes were repeatedly cited as factors.
Europe has become the biggest loser on the digital technology front not because of their people but because of their policy. Europe is filled with some of the most important advanced education and engineering programs in the world, and countless brilliant minds there could be leading world-leading digital technology companies that could rival the U.S., China, and the rest of the world. But Europe’s current “innovation culture” simply will not allow it.
Innovation culture refers to “the various social and political attitudes and pronouncements towards innovation, technology, and entrepreneurial activities that, taken together, influence the innovative capacity of a culture or nation.” A positive innovation culture depends upon a dynamic, open economy that encourages new entry, entrepreneurialism, continuous investment, and the free movement of goods, ideas, and talent.
At this point in time, it is clear that — at least for data-driven sectors — the E.U. has created the equivalent of an anti-innovation culture, and the GDPR has clearly played a major rule in that outcome. This regulatory regime has also had devastating consequences for venture capital formation and investment more generally in Europe. “Public policy and attitudes explain the relative technological decline and lack of economic dynamism,” Petit and Teece argue, and it has resulted in, “weak venture capital markets, fragmented research capabilities, low worker mobility and frustrated entrepreneurs.”
Industrial Policy Won’t Save Europe
While the E.U. is aggressively regulating data-driven sectors, it is simultaneously trying to use industrial policy programs to advance new technological capabilities and innovations. European policymakers would obviously like to avoid a repeat of the past quarter century and the lack of digital technology competition and innovation they witnessed.
But past European industrial policy efforts on the digital technology front have largely failed, as Connor Haaland and I documented earlier. Zoltan Acs notes that, despite many state efforts to promote digital innovation across the continent in recent decades, the E.U.’s regulatory policies have resulted in the opposite. “The European Union protected traditional industries and hoped that existing firms would introduce new technologies. This was a policy designed to fail,” he argues. A major recent book, Questioning the Entrepreneurial State: Status-quo, Pitfalls, and the Need for Credible Innovation Policy (Springer, 2022), offers additional evidence of the failure of European industrial policy efforts. No amount of industrial policy planning and spending is going to be able to overcome a negative innovation culture that suffocates entrepreneurialism and investment out of the gates.
These findings have lessons for policymakers in the United States, too, especially with President Biden and even many Republicans now calling for heavy-handed top-down regulation of digital technology companies. Basically, “President Biden Wants America to Become Europe on Tech Regulation,” I argued in a recent R Street Institute blog post. In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, I responded to recent opeds by both President Biden and former Trump Administration Attorney General William Barr in which they both advocated regulations that would take us down the disastrous path that the European Union has already charted.
“The only thing Europe exports now on the digital-technology front is regulation,” I noted in my response, and that makes it all the more mind-boggling that Biden and Barr want to go down that same path. “Overregulation by EU bureaucrats led Europe’s best entrepreneurs and investors to flee to the U.S. or elsewhere in search of the freedom to innovate.” This is the wrong innovation culture for the United States if we hope to be a leader in the Computational Revolution that is unfolding — and match expanding efforts by the Chinese to top us at it.
In closing, policymakers should never lose sight of the most fundamental lesson of innovation policy, which can be stated quite simply: You only get as much innovation as you allow to begin with. If the public policy defaults are all set to be maximally restrictive and limit entrepreneurialism and experimentation by design, then it should be no surprise when the country or continent fails to generate meaningful innovation, investment, new companies, and global competitive advantage. The European model is no model for America.
Additional reading:
“ Self-Inflicted Technological Suicide ”
“ AI Eats the World: Preparing for the Computational Revolution and the Policy Debates Ahead ”
“ Artificial Intelligence Primer: Definitions, Benefits & Policy Challenges ”
“ The Proper Governance Default for AI ”
“ The Coming Onslaught of ‘Algorithmic Fairness’ Regulations ”
“ Why the Future of AI Will Not Be Invented in Europe ”
“ Can European-Style Industrial Policies Create Tech Supremacy ?”
“ Does the US Need a More Targeted Industrial Policy for AI & High-Tech ?”
February 7, 2023
Quick Thoughts on Biden’s Tech-Bashing in the State of the Union
FACT: According to the BEA, in 2021, “the U.S. digital economy accounted for $3.70 trillion of gross output, $2.41 trillion of value added (translating to 10.3 % of U.S. GDP), $1.24 trillion of compensation 8.0 million jobs.”In 2021…
$3.70 trillion of gross output$2.41 trillion of value added (=10.3% percent GDP)$1.24 trillion of compensation8.0 million jobsFACT: 18 of the world’s Top 25 tech companies by Market Cap are US-based firms. The rest of the world would love to have this “problem”! Again, smart policy made this possible.
It’d be a huge mistake to adopt Europe’s approach to tech regulation. As I noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, “The only thing Europe exports now on the digital-technology front is regulation.” Yet, Biden would have us import the EU model to our shores.My R Street colleague Josh Withrow has also noted how, “the EU’s approach appears to be, in sum, ‘If you can’t innovate, regulate.’” America should not be following the disastrous regulatory path of the European Union on digital technology policy.On antitrust regulation, here is a study by my R Street colleague Wayne Brough on the dangerous approach that the Biden administration wants, which would swing a wrecking ball through the tech economy. We have to avoid this.It is particularly important that the US not follow the EU’s lead on artificial intelligence regulation at a time when we are in heated competition w China on the AI front as I noted here.American tech innovators flourished thanks to a positive innovation culture rooted in permissionless innovation & policies like Section 230, which allowed American firms to become global powerhouses. And we’ve moved from a world of information scarcity to one of information abundance. Let’s keep it that way.
January 26, 2023
Self-Inflicted Technological Suicide
The Wall Street Journal has run my response to troubling recent opeds by President Biden (“Republicans and Democrats, Unite Against Big Tech Abuses“) and former Trump Administration Attorney General William Barr (“Congress Must Halt Big Tech’s Power Grab“) in which they both called for European-style regulation of U.S. digital technology markets.
“The only thing Europe exports now on the digital-technology front is regulation,” I noted in my response, and that makes it all the more mind-boggling that Biden and Barr want to go down that same path. “[T]he EU’s big-government regulatory crusade against digital tech: Stagnant markets, limited innovation and a dearth of major players. Overregulation by EU bureaucrats led Europe’s best entrepreneurs and investors to flee to the U.S. or elsewhere in search of the freedom to innovate.”
Thus, the Biden and Barr plans for importing European-style tech mandates, “would be a stake through the heart of the ‘permissionless innovation’ that made America’s info-tech economy a global powerhouse.” In a longer response to the Biden oped that I published on the R Street blog, I note that:
“It is remarkable to think that after years of everyone complaining about the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, we might get the one type of bipartisanship America absolutely does not need: the single most destructive technological suicide in U.S. history, with mandates being substituted for markets, and permission slips for entrepreneurial freedom.”
What makes all this even more remarkable is that they calls for hyper-regulation come at a time when China is challenging America’s dominance in technology and AI. Thus, “new mandates could compromise America’s lead,” I conclude. “Shackling our tech sectors with regulatory chains will hobble our nation’s ability to meet global competition and undermine innovation and consumer choice domestically.”
Jump over to the WSJ to read my entire response (“EU-Style Regulation Begets EU-Style Stagnation“) and to the R Street blog for my longer essay (“President Biden Wants America to Become Europe on Tech Regulation“).
December 26, 2022
AI Policy Research: My Year in Review
I spent much of 2022 writing about the growing policy debate over artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and the Computational Revolution more generally. Here are some of the major highlights of my work on this front.
BIG PICTURE: “ AI Eats the World: Preparing for the Computational Revolution and the Policy Debates Ahead ” – Overview of the unfolding debate over algorithmic policy + a call to arms for more analysts to get involved.POLICY DEFAULTS: “ The Proper Governance Default for AI ” – Which policy default should we choose for algorithmic technologies: The Precautionary Principle or The Proactionary Principle? This is the single most important issue in AI policy today.PRAGMATIC GOVERNANCE: Two essays that sketch out a flexible governance framework for AI – “’Running Code and Rough Consensus’ for AI: Polycentric Governance in the Algorithmic Age,” & “ AI Governance ‘on the Ground’ vs ‘on the Books. ’”REGULATORY OVERVIEW: “The Coming Onslaught of ‘Algorithmic Fairness’ Regulations” – An paper by Neil Chilson and me examining the growing array of federal, state & local AI regulatory proposals in the U.S.AI TRANS-ATLANTIC POLICY BATTLE: “ Why the Future of AI Will Not Be Invented in Europe ” – A look at the EU’s policy vision for artificial intelligence and why it discourages algorithmic innovation.AI & CULTURE: “ How Science Fiction Dystopianism Shapes the Debate over AI & Robotics ” – My look at the ways pop culture depictions of AI warp social and political discussions.AI & HEALTH CARE CASE STUDY: “ What I Learned about the Power of #AI at the Cleveland Clinic ” – As a member of the US Chamber AI Commission, I visited the Cleveland Clinic to learn how AI was revolutionizing health care.THE LANGUAGE OF DEBATE: “ We Really Need To ‘Have a Conversation’ About AI … or Do We? ” – My examination of how tech critics twist the debate over AI using rhetorical games that are mostly just meant to slow or stop progress.All these essays + dozens more can be found on my: “Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy.” I have several lengthy studies and many shorter essays coming in the first half of 2023.
Finally, here is a Federalist Society podcast discussion about AI policy hosted by Jennifer Huddleston in which Hodan Omaar of ITIF and I offer a big picture overview of where things are headed next.
December 11, 2022
Revisionist Histories of America’s Digital Revolution
Everywhere you look in tech policy land these days, people decry China as a threat to America’s technological supremacy or our national security. Many of these claims are well-founded, while others are somewhat overblown. Regardless, as I argue in a new piece for National Review this week, “America Won’t Beat China by Becoming China.” Many pundits and policymakers seem to think that only a massive dose of central planning and Big Government technocratic bureaucracy can counter the Chinese threat. It’s a recipe for a great deal of policy mischief.
Some of these advocates for a ‘let’s-be-more-like-China’ approach to tech policy also engage in revisionist histories about America’s recent success stories in the personal computing revolution and internet revolution. As I note in my essay, “[t]he revisionists instead prefer to believe that someone high up in government was carefully guiding this decentralized innovation. In the new telling of this story, deregulation had almost nothing to do with it.” In fact, I was asked by National Review to write this piece in response to a recent essay by Wells King of American Compass, who has penned some rather remarkable revisionist tales of government basically being responsible for all the innovation in digital tech sectors over the past quarter century. Markets and venture capital had nothing to do with it by his reasoning. It’s what Science writer Matt Ridley correctly labels “innovation creationism,” or the notion that it basically takes a village to raise an innovator.
Perhaps the best example of this sort of twisted logic was President Barack Obama’s infamous 2012 “you didn’t build that” speech, which was widely mocked by many conservatives at the time as being completely off the mark. The conservative critics rightly lambasted Obama for underplaying the role of markets, entrepreneurs, and private investors as the primary engine of America’s remarkably innovative economy. Unfortunately, however, many of today’s “national conservatives” are borrowing Obama’s twisted revisionist vision and, worse yet, fabricating entirely new nonsensical ‘it-takes-a-village’ narratives that go well beyond it.
In my essay, I explain why innovation creationism about the internet and the Digital Revolution gets the story of the past quarter century horribly wrong. The tech revisionist misidentify and overplay the role government played in this arena and they also ignore the many mistakes our government and other governments (especially in Europe) have made when trying to technocratically plan tech systems. As I conclude in my essay,
America’s world-leading digital-technology companies and technologies were not the product of intentional design or bureaucratic initiatives. Corporatism and central planning should be rejected as the basis for U.S. technology policy. And regardless of whether they happen to be trendy right now, economically illiterate arguments like King’s should be relegated to the ash heap of history.
Jump over to National Review to read the entire essay. And here’s a list of some of my other recent writing on industrial policy:
Adam Thierer & Connor Haaland, “Does the US Need a More Targeted Industrial Policy for AI & High-Tech?” Mercatus Center Research Paper, November 17, 2021.Adam Thierer, “Book Review: ‘Questioning the Entrepreneurial State,’” April 26, 2022.Adam Thierer, “Thoughts on the America COMPETES Act: The Most Corporatist & Wasteful Industrial Policy Ever,” January 26, 2022.Adam Thierer, “The Coming Industrial Policy Hangover,” The Hill, February 16, 2022.Podcast: “What’s Wrong with Industrial Policy,” Hold These Truths with Rep. Dan Crenshw, February 16, 2022.Tad DeHaven and Adam Thierer, “The Military-Industrial Complex Offers a Cautionary Tale for Industrial Policy Planning,” Discourse, March 25, 2022.Adam Thierer, “Government Planning and Spending Won’t Replicate Silicon Valley,” Discourse, August 18, 2021.Adam Thierer, “To Promote Tech Hubs Across the Country, Governments Should Focus on Improving the General Business Environment,” Discourse, September 9, 2021.Adam Thierer, “Industrial Policy as ‘Casino Economics‘,” The Hill, July 12, 2021.Adam Thierer, “‘Japan Inc.’ and Other Tales of Industrial Policy Apocalypse,” Discourse, June 28, 2021.Adam Thierer & Connor Haaland, “Should the U.S. Copy China’s Industrial Policy?” Discourse, March 11, 2021.Connor Haaland & Adam Thierer, “Can European-Style Industrial Policies Create Tech Supremacy?” Discourse, February 11, 2021.Matthew D. Mitchell and Adam Thierer, “Industrial Policy is a Very Old, New Idea,” Discourse, April 6, 2021.Adam Thierer, “Industrial Policy Advocates Should Learn from Don Lavoie,” Discourse, November 5, 2021.Adam Thierer, “On Defining ‘Industrial Policy,’” Technology Liberation Front, September 3, 2020.Adam Thierer, “Skeptical Takes on Expansive Industrial Policy Efforts,” Technology Liberation Front, March 15, 2021.December 9, 2022
Gonzalez v Google, Section 230 & the Future of Permissionless Innovation
Over at Discourse magazine this week, my R Street colleague Jonathan Cannon and I have posted a new essay on how it has been “Quite a Fall for Digital Tech.” We mean that both in the sense that the last few months have witnessed serious market turmoil for some of America’s leading tech companies, but also that the political situation for digital tech more generally has become perilous. Plenty of people on the Left and the Right now want a pound of flesh from the info-tech sector, and the starting cut at the body involves Section 230, the 1996 law that shields digital platforms from liability for content posted by third parties.
With the Supreme Court recently announcing it will hear Gonzalez v. Google, a case that could significantly narrow the scope of Section 230, the stakes have grown higher. It was already the case that federal and state lawmakers were looking to chip away at Sec. 230’s protections through an endless variety of regulatory measures. But if the Court guts Sec. 230 in Gonzalez, then it will really be open season on tech companies, as lawsuits will fly at every juncture whenever someone does not like a particular content moderation decision. Cannon and I note in our new essay that,
if the court moves to weaken liability protections for digital platforms, the ramifications will be profoundly negative. While many critics today complain that the law’s liability protections have been too generous, the reality is that Section 230 has been the legal linchpin supporting the permissionless innovation model that fueled America’s commanding lead in the digital information revolution. Thanks to the law, digital entrepreneurs have been free to launch bold new ideas without fear of punishing lawsuits or regulatory shenanigans. This has boosted economic growth and dramatically broadened consumer information and communications options.
Many critics of Sec. 230 claim that reforms are needed to “rein in Big Tech.” But, ironically, gutting Sec. 230 would probably only make big tech companies even bigger because the smaller players in the market would struggle to deal with the mountains of regulations and lawsuits that would come about in its absence. Cannon and I continue on to explore what it means for the next generation of online innovators if these court cases go badly and Section 230 is scaled back or gutted:
Section 230 has been a legal cornerstone of the entire ecosystem. All the large-scale platforms we depend on for our online experience would never have gotten off the ground without its protection. […] More importantly, these platforms have relied on being able to host third-party content without fear of opening a Pandora’s box of private litigation and endless challenges from governments. By removing these protections, platforms will be forced to significantly increase their moderation practices to reduce risk of suits from zealous litigants. Besides the chilling effect this will have on speech, it also will put up a cost-prohibitive barrier for smaller entrants who lack the resources to have an army of content moderators to find and eliminate undesirable content.
The broader effect on market dynamism and the nation’s technological competitiveness will be profound as permissionless innovation is replaced by mountains of top-down permission slips. “If America’s digital sector gets kneecapped by the Supreme Court, or if new regulations or legislative proposals scale back Section 230 protections, it will be significantly more difficult for U.S. firms to continue to lead in the development and commercialization of new technologies,” we conclude.
Jump over to Discourse to read the entire piece.
December 8, 2022
Sunsets & Sandboxes Can Help Slay ‘Zombie Government’
I have a new oped in the Orange County Register discussing reforms that can help address the growing problem of “zombie government,” or old government policies and programs that just seem to never die even thought they have long outlived their usefulness. While there is no single solution to this sort of “set-it-and-forget-it” approach to government that locks in old policies and programs, but I note that:
sunsets and sandboxes are two policy innovations that can help liberate California from old and cumbersome government regulations and rules. Sunsets pause or end rules or programs regularly to ensure they don’t grow stale. Sandboxes are policy experiments that allow for the temporary relaxation of regulations to see what approaches might work better.
When California, other states, and the federal government fail to occasional do spring cleanings of unneeded old rules and programs, it creates chronic regulatory accumulation that has real costs and consequences for the efficient operation of markets and important government programs.
Jump over to the OCR site to read the entire oped.
December 6, 2022
Video: Censorship is a Big Government Problem, Not a Big Tech Problem
My colleague Wayne Brough and I recently went on the “Kibbe on Liberty” show to discuss how to discuss the state of free speech on the internet. We explained how censorship is a Big Government problem, not a Big Tech problem. Here’s the complete description of the show and the link to the full episode is below.
“With Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, we are in the middle of a national debate about the tension between censorship and free expression online. On the Right, many people are calling for government to rein in what they perceive as the excesses of Big Tech companies, while the Left wants the government to crack down on speech they deem dangerous. Both approaches make the same mistake of giving politicians authority over what we are allowed to say and hear. And with recent revelations about government agents leaning on social media companies to censor speech, it’s clear that when it comes to the online conversation, there’s no such thing as a purely private company.”
For more on this issues, please see: “The Classical Liberal Approach to Digital Media Free Speech Issues.”
Adam Thierer's Blog
- Adam Thierer's profile
- 1 follower
