Measuring AI Governance: A Balancing Act between Market and Human Rights

• In Event: New Challenges in Technology Governance

Abstract

When and why do countries regulate artificial intelligence (AI)? A key component of the fourth industrial revolution, AI is rapidly transforming economy, information environment, political participation, and essential public and private services. Yet the misuses of AI, such as invasive data collection and discriminatory algorithms, have posed great threats to privacy rights, equality, and other fundamental rights and freedoms. Over the past five years, national regulators have taken measures to foster innovation and mitigate the risks of digital technologies. In the domain of AI governance, competing regulatory models have emerged with different social purposes. Authoritarian countries indicate a coercion-based narrative to increase state capacity and public safety. Within democracies, divergence also arises as to varying degrees of human rights protection. The EU has been a global leader in data protection and privacy legislation, promoting a legitimacy-based regulatory framework. To capture the noteworthy trends for future analysis, I examine over 800 national AI policy initiatives among 62 OECD member and partner countries. A wide range of policy instruments are covered, including legislation, normative recommendations, and institutional adjustments. Through topic modeling and scaling analysis of policy objective and description, I create an index of AI governance that can reflect a country's regulatory orientation over time. Key dimensions include research and development, business incentives, AI ethics, and human rights. In addition, I measure the similarity between countries based on text analysis and inferential network models. Analytical tests will be conducted to assess the effect of domestic institutions and multinational corporations on a country’s policy preference. As the first attempt to systematically describe the landscape of AI regulation, this project speaks to the debate on the changing role of state in the digital age and the balancing of public goods with special interests.

Author

• Huimin Li, Princeton University