Why Banning AI Is the Worst Thing You Can Do for Your Safety

What K-Pop can teach you about good AI regulation

What K-Pop can teach you about good AI regulation

Photo by Guillaume Périgois on Unsplash

Is giving young children access to nail guns a good idea?

Unless you have a very dark sense of humour, you know it’s not a good idea.

Your ability to imagine potential dangers, your ability to feel worry and fear, and take action to protect yourself from what you fear is essential for your survival.

But here’s a different question for you…

Do you always make your best decisions based on the things you fear?

For Kids + Nail Guns, that looks like a good choice.

But should you avoid going to the doctor because you fear what they will tell you about your health? Probably not a good choice.

So you know that sometimes fear leads us to good decisions, and other times fear can lead us to bad decisions.

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So how do you know when?

Perhaps you are worried about AI, and you feel it’s important we have the strongest regulation so people are protected. Or maybe you’re not sure.

But do your fears about AI lead to a good decision about AI regulation?

France & EU AI hopes crash into it’s fears

You know that for many issues, some people will have great hopes about something, while others will fear it.

Immigration is a good example.

I’m sure you’d agree, that AI is another great example of this.

A recent article in Politico highlighted a huge conflict in France about this in their article about how France’s AI hopes collide with French love of regulating tech.

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Frances AI supporters

In one corner, many in France are trying to encourage and support AI development in the country to help it become a leader in the world.

These supporters include French President Emmanuel Macron, many French companies including leading AI startup Mistral AI, as well as AI ‘God-father of AI’ and pioneer Yann Le Cun from Meta.

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The French government agreed with them and joined forces with Germany and Italy to oppose the regulations on AI that the European Parliament suggested.

As French Digital Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said about the proposed AI regulations:

I worry that in the recent past few weeks, the EU Parliament … has taken a very sort of strong stance on AI regulation, using in some sense this AI act as a way to try and solve too many problems at once

He went on to say:

What we want is a regulation that offers both protection for users … and establishes trust, but that is also very flexible enough to allow for the development in the next few weeks, and next few months in France and Europe

France’s AI skeptics

In the other corner, are many EU regulatory bodies such as the European Parliament and the European Commission, in particular Frenchman and EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, as well as many other players in French civil society.

As Breton said recently about Mistral AI:

Mistral is lobbying — that’s normal…But we are not fooled: it is defending its business, not the general interest

Many of these EU organisations have been hostile to Big tech companies generally for many years, believing they usually put profit before public good and must be tightly regulated.

Photo by Frederic Köberl on Unsplash

The French cultural sector has also been very worried that the pro-AI approach led by Macron and others will sacrifice intellectual property rights in the interest of encouraging more AI development.

The president of the French Authors Society SACD said:

This is the first time that France, where copyright was invented, has not defended intellectual property

Nobody is seriously saying there should be no regulation of AI.

This issue is how much, and what and where.

The copyright issue

The issue of copyright perhaps best illustrates what some see as too much or too little regulation for AI..

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