Since AI started its historic rise in prominence in 2022, the conversations around how the industry could be regulated have swelled at a similar rate. Many startup founders think regulating the industry now could stifle innovation. But others don’t agree and think waiting to implement policy and regulation could bite the industry down the line.
Helen Toner, the director of strategy and foundational research grants from the Center of Security and Emerging Technology, and a former board member at OpenAI, understands the AI industry’s anxieties around regulation. But at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in June, Toner told the audience that AI players shouldn’t be afraid of regulation now but rather be more afraid of regulation that could come on a whim later on.
She added that if the U.S. government stalls on implementing regulation now, the AI industry could see the same fate as areas like crypto and social media. An incident will happen and then Congress will quickly pass legislation that regulates the industry in way that could be overbearing or less thought out than what it could look like if it was implemented before something happened.
“Some of the sort of smarter and more thoughtful actors that I’ve seen in this space are trying to say, ‘okay, what are the pretty light touch, pretty common sense guardrails we can put in place now to make future crises less likely, less severe, and basically make it less likely that you end up with the need for some kind of rapid and poorly-thought-through response later,’” she said.
Toner said that regardless of how startups or VCs feel about potential AI regulation, they should be active in conversations about it. Companies of any size and stage should talk to folks in Washington and lobbyists about how their companies operate, what different regulation could look like, and how it would impact their businesses. Doing so allows them to have a hand in shaping regulation that works for them.
“I think thinking of it as a productive collaboration between different people with different kinds of expertise, and bringing the expertise that you have, is really valuable,” Toner said. “I think thinking of it as either something to kind of ignore, or as sort of an adversarial fight where you have to be kind of trying to get the other side to do as little as possible, I think will be less productive.”
Smaller startups and entrepreneurs thinking of building in the AI space can start prepping for potential regulation too, Toner said.
“[Companies should be] keeping track of what are you training; how are you training it? How are you testing it? What are you doing with your data? How are you updating it? Which models you have deployed, and which products at which time,” she said. “The stories you hear from people who’ve been on the inside of some of these big companies, really respected companies, is they often don’t even have good records of like which combination of models is running that particular product right now.”
But while Congress has held hearings on potential AI regulation, and Toner is confident it will come to be at some point, she doesn’t think it will come anytime soon regardless of how this year’s election cycle shakes out.
“If I had to put money on it, I would probably put money on there not being enormous new changes at the federal level,” Toner said. “And then it’s just a question of what else might happen around the edges.”