Killing the golden goose? A framework for regulating disruptive technologies

Abstract

Core precepts of the Silicon Valley technology culture include disruption, breaking things, and profiting from the results. As technologies run ahead of regulatory regimes, a great deal of attention has been paid to the organization and evaluation of regulatory processes, from corporate self-regulation, to direct state intervention, and multiple stakeholder governance. However, it is less clear what values or principles should animate these approaches. Public discussions and academic literatures have identified at least four critical areas that require attention: data market and business monopolies; moral dilemmas of AI, such as surveillance and behavioral engineering; a variety of environmental harms; and the spread of hate, disinformation and attacks on liberal democratic values. This analysis develops a holistic framework of guiding principles to address these different problem areas. Without a set of widely shared guiding principles, regulatory approaches will remain fragmentary and weak. Policies in one area may miss or even create problems in others. The aim is not to impose a priori solutions on complex problems, but to offer scholars, regulators, and stakeholders a heuristic framework to guide policy thinking.

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