Op-ed: Should Artificial Intelligence Be Regulated? - Future of Life Institute

Should artificial intelligence be regulated? And if so, what should those regulations look like? These are difficult questions to answer for any technology still in development stages – regulations, like those on the food, pharmaceutical, automobile and airline industries, are typically applied after something bad has happened, not in anticipation of a technology becoming dangerous. But AI has been evolving so quickly, and the impact of AI technology has the potential to be so great that many prefer not to wait and learn from mistakes, but to plan ahead and regulate proactively. In the near term, issues concerning job losses, autonomous vehicles, AI- and algorithmic-decision making, and "bots" driving social media require attention by policymakers, just as many new technologies do. In the longer term, though, possible AI impacts span the full spectrum of benefits and risks to humanity – from the possible development of a more utopic society to the potential extinction of human civilization.