Regulators Desperately Seek AI Knowledge, But Their Wallets Say Otherwise!
“Regulators Need AI Expertise. They Can’t Afford It”
“To fight off algorithmic misinformation, discrimination, and online radicalization, we’re going to need a skilled workforce that understands Artificial Intelligence (AI) intimately,” cries out a recent piece from Wired. With both sophistication and a dash of despair, the article expresses the rallying cry of many tech aficionados who yearn for the day when regulatory bodies perform under adequate and competent AI expertise.
In a world where our personal devices seem to have an eerily accurate understanding of our thoughts and whims, it is indeed puzzling how the regulators, the supposed protectors of our digital universe, are yet to catch up. It does appear we have let the machines out-innovate us.
While the giants of technology continue to churn out AI inventions like candy at a fair, the rest of us can’t keep up. The regulators are freezing in the headlights of a technology moving faster than one of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop pods. Not pretty, is it?
AI is no longer a distant cousin of the digital sphere but is rapidly becoming its centre. Talking about AI being indefinitely postponed to the future is akin to saying that the internet will take some more time to catch on. Oh, please. We’re already well into the AI age. It’s here, it’s now, and unfortunately, the folks in charge are stumbling around like newbie roller skaters on a steep hill.
What the Wired article fails to underscore, however, is just how desperately we need these technosage regulators. We are on the precipice of a brave new Orwellian world where machines know everything, and we know nothing about these machines. The technological Genie is out of the bottle and unfortunately, can’t be shoved back in.
Affordable AI expertise is the much-needed bridge across the treacherous chasm between technological advancement and regulatory measures. We require wall-to-wall technosages in every crevice of our governance structures, else the platforms that control our digital connections will simply become a ‘law unto themselves’.
Artificial Intelligence shouldn’t feel like astrophysics to the legislators. It should be like their native tongue, second nature. Achieving this could well involve convincing a hoard of the gifted nerds from Silicon Valley to take up public office, a proposition that’s about as appealing as juggling knives for them. But find a way we must, else we slide further into an era where our digital guardians are nothing more than babes in the vast wilderness of artificial intelligence. Yes, we’re looking at you, regulators.