Nick Heer: Managing ‘A.I.’ Risks in an Era of Rapid Progress

There is a neat rhetorical trick in both Sinofsky’s and Thompson’s articles. It is too early to regulate, they argue, and doing so would only stifle the industry and prevent it from reaching its best potential and highest aspirations. […] many of the businesses working to make it a reality are some of the world’s most valuable. Alas, it becomes more difficult to create rules as industries grow and businesses become giants — look, for example, to Sinofsky’s appropriate criticism of the patchwork approach to proposed privacy laws in several U.S. states, or Thompson’s explanation of how complicated it is to regulate “entrenched” corporations like Facebook and Google on privacy grounds given their enormous lobbying might.

Can’t do any consumer protections before an industry is massive, can’t do it once they get massive either. Got it.

I don’t have the strongest feelings on this, but I will say that 20 years on from the rise of social media and ad tech getting insane, it would be kinda nice if we had some rights or protections rather than simply hoping businesses do the right thing for us.