The emerging AI regulatory landscape: What tech practitioners need to know

Steven Wood presenting.

Current advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have created much excitement and concern with experts across industry, academia, and government regarding both future and present capabilities of and potential existential threats posed by AI. AI experts, politicians, policymakers, and others have called for regulation and controls on the development and proliferation of AI, some going so far as to suggest that AI represents an extinction level threat to humanity. Currently, various regulatory regimes relating to the development and standardization of AI technologies exist and need to be considered. The specific laws depend in part on geographic location, as jurisdictions such as the European Union (EU) already have their own legislation (EU AI Act) and more than 30 US States have started regulating AI, enacting over 50 state-level laws in the absence of broad federal legislation. Further, international efforts between the EU and US seek to provide support and leadership in international standardization efforts by collaborating on development of technical AI standards, some currently underway before the International Organization for Standardization. These standards impact the design, operation, measurement, evaluation, and risk management of trustworthy AI. In January 2023 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published its Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and the National Institute of Standards and Technology released an AI Risk Management Framework. On October 30, 2023, building on earlier work, including an EO directing agencies to combat algorithmic discrimination and obtaining voluntary commitments from major US companies (such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI) to engage in safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) on the "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI". In early February 2024, the White House announced that the tasked executive agencies had completed all 90-day actions mandated by this order. Additional regulatory landscape considerations important to AI include export controls under International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR), as well as patentability considerations before the US Patent & Trademark Office. Further critical developments at the intersection with Intellectual Property include the various lawsuits alleging copyright infringement in the training of Large Language Models like Chat-GPT, etc. With so much action around AI technologies development and regulation it can be challenging to closely track and understand the implications of everything as it continues to evolve so dynamically. Nevertheless, this academic review will endeavor to provide an accurate snapshot of the current legal regimes and regulatory landscapes impacting AI and its use as a practical guide for AI developers and entrepreneurs.