A girl doing schoolwork talking to an AI chat bot on her phone

The new politics of AI: Why fast technological change requires bold policy targets

Article

The upcoming AI Action Summit in Paris is an opportunity to show how we can harness artificial intelligence (AI) as a force for societal, economic, and environmental good.

AI is fundamentally different from other technologies – it is set to unleash a vast number of highly sophisticated ‘artificial agents’ into the economy. AI systems that can take actions and make decisions are not just tools – they are actors. This can be a good thing. But it requires a novel type of policymaking and politics. Merely accelerating AI deployment and hoping it will deliver public value will likely be insufficient.

In this briefing, we outline how the summit constitutes the first event of a new era of AI policymaking that links AI policy to delivering public value. We argue that AI needs to be directed towards societies’ goals, via ‘mission-based policies’.

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