The Future of Tech Governance Around the Global

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2:48Anu Bradford is Henry L. Moses, professor of law and international organization at Columbia Law School. She was last on with us just over two years ago when the Will Smith eating spaghetti test looked not realistic at all. Just to show how far things have come. She's the author of several books, including most recently Digital Empires, The Global Battle to Regulate Technology. This was published back in 2023. And that's exactly where I want to start with you, Professor Bradford. I got an invite today to try out Sora from a friend of mine. I think he's a paying subscriber of OpenAI's ChatGPT, and that's why he has an invitation.

3:26And I was watching some of the videos that he made, and I'm thinking to myself, we are so cooked. Are we? So thanks so much for having me, Tim and Emily. We may well be cooked, but the question is, what are we most worried about? I think there are many exciting developments. I think we're certainly more entertained in many ways. But at the same time, I think those who warned us early on that this is not the kind of AI revolution that we should be just leaving for the tech companies to govern, to manage. We do need governments involved. We need some guardrails. We need some regulation to make sure that these fast advances that we are witnessing are moving to the direction that we're comfortable with.

4:11It seems like it's too late, though. I don't think it's too late. I think we certainly are not at the point where we can say that AI is done. I think we will continue to see massive developments in coming years. And we already have AI governance regulation on the radar of many lawmakers. And obviously, the Europeans have been most proactive, as they usually are. And they have the AI Act, a comprehensive piece of legislation that is already in force. And now it's then the matter of implementing it effectively. And then we also need to see what happens in the United States at the state level. China is definitely interested in governing AI.

4:56We have many other jurisdictions. So I think there is a lot that is happening and a lot more that needs to be done. In your new book, Digital Empires, you break apart how basically different regimes across the globe are governing and regulating AI differently. So there's the US, there's Europe, there's China. In your research, have you found one nation is kind of doing that balancing act the best so far in terms of balancing out? They don't want to stifle innovation, but they also want to protect users of AI, consumers of AI, companies that are getting involved with AI? Who's doing the balancing act the best in your view?

5:43So I think any regulator really needs to think about this balancing to make sure that we harness these tremendous benefits that are associated with AI, but also really safeguard our citizens and societies from various risks. And in many ways, there is a perception that the Europeans are erring on the side of preemptively protecting against these risks and maybe then forgoing some of the innovation benefits, whereas the Americans would be erring on the side of maybe being very techno-optimist and not thinking about all those potential downsides. I think in many ways, I do like and endorse the European model in the sense that, in my view that best safeguards the public interest and really takes seriously the fundamental rights of individuals and democratic structures of the society.

6:39But there is always, I really reject this notion that this comes at the cost of innovation. There definitely is a gap where the Americans are doing much better in generating AI innovations compared to the Europeans. But the reason is not that the Europeans are so keen on regulating. I think there are many other reasons that explain why there are just fundamental pillars of the tech ecosystem in the US that are much stronger. And the Europeans have fallen short in replicating that. So regulation, as such, the protection of those rights is not a choice that needs to come at the cost of making beneficial progress in this space.

7:20So, you know, I keep going back to our conversation that I had with you two years ago because the world has changed so much since then. Two years ago, Joe Biden was president. There were a lot of folks who didn't think that Donald Trump would win another term. Fast forward two years. Donald Trump is the president. David Sachs is crypto and AI czar. the regime is thinks about this completely differently than I think it's fair to say the Biden administration. What do you think the U.S. needs to be doing right now to regulate this technology? What would you like to see David Sachs do? Yeah, so you're so right.

8:03There has been a complete U-turn in many ways towards the end of the Biden administration. There was closer alignment between the traditional transatlantic allies, where the US was really moving closer to the European view that technology like AI needs guardrails. And there was a genuine attempt to join forces among the world's techno democracies in order to halt the advances of Chinese digital authoritarian views of governing technology. So I really saw this potential for the US and the EU to join forces to bring about a very beneficial chase in this space. But now the US is doing, I think, two things.

8:43So it's first of all, giving a lot more power to the tech companies, walking away from regulation, embracing this deregulatory zeal that really reflects the very strong form of techno-libertarian, techno-optimist world view. But in many ways, the US is also playing Beijing's game and becoming very state-driven. We see a massive state investment in some of these leading tech companies. We see export controls, investment restrictions. We see subsidies. So the U.S. is, to me, losing some of its own goals. And if you think about how that will also impact the U.S. is adamant goal of being a leader in AI, what is happening in the space of immigration, I think that is really counterproductive if you think about where all those AI innovations come from the US.

9:40So what the US would need to do, first, the US would need to regulate this space. We need to make sure that fundamental rights are protected. We need to make sure that those societal risks are under control. And we need to also at the same time make sure that we will continue to invest in the development of the AI by retaining the world's best talent, which often is immigrant talent, including then Chinese data scientists who have been contributing to advances in this space in the U.S. Is there any specific regulation that comes to mind like that you would want to see in the U.S. that would prevent this kind of idea that Tim presented in the beginning of uh the segment about this this spaghetti test it sounds silly the will smith spaghetti test but it gets at the heart i'm going to show you the videos it's like it's crazy yeah concern that people have that suddenly the internet is going to be you know filled with these videos and we're not going to be able to tell what's real and emily it's the end i'm sorry well maybe we can have a professor help she said it's not she said it's not the end already which i'm grateful Right.

10:52It's not the end. Is there a specific piece of regulation that comes to mind? Is it about, I don't know, digital privacy, people needing disclaimers on top of every video that you see on the Internet? it? So I think there are many aspects and there's no easy way to say that you just need to do one thing in order to then address this multitude of different harms. But one thing it does start from the protection of privacy and our agency and our ability to be able to tell what is fiction and what is not. And our ability to engage in conversation based on real information that is not manipulated by AI.

11:32And this information obviously existed even without ChatGPT type of tools, but they are now fueled with this AI driven ability to manipulate our sense of reality. So in many ways, I think it does need labeling. It does need the kind of transparency and accountability that we have a sense of how these AI systems are built and how we engage with them. But then there are also risks around just protecting content, content creators. We need to take copyright seriously. And the idea of how do you actually train these models with the data that has been generated by individual authors, by journalists.

12:17And that needs to be also compensated world so that we still have the incentive to engage in that kind of content production. But privacy is obviously very high on my list. Disinformation is very high on my list. Then there are questions that are more about existential risks, more about systemic risks. And even if it's hard to sometimes know the probabilities of some of the most severe risks and how likely they are to materialize, we still need to be prepared to also, as a society, to confront that kind of reality when AI advances really fast and we reach the point when we find even harder to govern that technology.

12:59So I think there are all these layers, and we are not even really having, at least at the federal level, a real conversation in how we go about regulating the space. Professor Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses, is professor of law and international organization at Columbia Law School. She's the author of several books, including her most recent, Digital Empires, The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, published back in 2023, but as relevant right now as it was two years ago.

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