The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

Regulating not just hyper-evolutionary but omni-use general-purpose technologies is incredibly challenging. Consider how motorized transport is regulated. There isn’t a single regulator, or even just a few laws. Instead, we have regulations around traffic, roads, parking, seatbelts, emissions, driver training, and so on. This comes not just from national legislatures but also from local governments, highway agencies, transport ministries issuing guidance, licensing bodies, offices of environmental standards. It relies not just on lawmakers but on police forces, traffic wardens, car companies, mechanics, city planners, and insurers. Complex regulations refined over decades made roads and vehicles incrementally safer and more ordered, enabling their growth and spread. And yet 1.35 million people a year still die in traffic accidents. Regulation may lessen the negative effects, but it can’t erase bad outcomes like crashes, pollution, or sprawl. We have decided that this is an acceptable human cost, given the benefits. That “we” is crucial. Regulation doesn’t just rely on the passing of a new law. It is also about norms, structures of ownership, unwritten codes of compliance and honesty, arbitration procedures, contract enforcement, oversight mechanisms. All of this needs to be integrated and the public needs to buy in.

Rules, Roads, and Reality: Why Regulation Mitigates but Can’t Eliminate Harm