I gained a small amount of experience working with law during my time in financial services, but I have never formally studied it. My programme’s core course, Data and AI Ethics, Law, and Governance, was my first exposure to law within an academic environment. I was pleasantly surprised; I had imagined law to be rather a tedious discipline, but I quickly saw we would not be memorising long, dry legal texts. During the course intensive, I really enjoyed thinking about how legislation can be interpreted in different ways.
In terms of AI and data law, the course has revealed and confirmed the stark inadequacy of existing legal frameworks to cover AI comprehensively. Before we even consider the law, we must tackle ethical issues that, until recently, were merely theoretical. But now these ethical dilemmas demand practical solutions. (A great example of this is the ethics of autonomous vehicles: once coined the “new trolley problem”, this ethical thought experiment is among the first to become reality.)
A moment which stands out is when John (the course instructor) explained that legislation in some areas works because it has been tweaked and perfected for centuries (e.g. economics, violence). With big data and AI, we are essentially starting anew. This underscored the considerable effort and dedication ahead of us which is required for successful AI and data governance. To examine the ethical challenges of 21st-century technology is not to open a can of worms, but Pandora’s box. Together, these facts could justify a new modus operandi.
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While I haven’t settled on a final project idea yet, one idea that’s stuck with me is the proposal of a 98% income tax on AI companies. This concept can be attributed to Mo Gawdat, an entrepreneur and writer whose perspective on AI aligns closely with my own. While studying the core course I realised that radical problems require radical solutions, and few are as radical as the AI alignment problem. Gawdat’s proposal might therefore be a fitting solution, but the willingness of our politicians to take meaningful action leaves a lot to be desired.
Curated using ChatGPT 3.5 by OpenAI. For more information visit chat.openai.com.
