Published July 30, 2024 | Version v1
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Policy Approaches for Building a Responsible Ecosystem

  • 1. ROR icon University of Edinburgh

Description

This report explains the historical role that governments have assumed in creating a more responsible ecosystem around new technologies, and protecting the safety and fundamental rights of citizens. This role is particularly crucial in the context of AI, given how ubiquitously it is used and how it is now almost impossible to opt out of its impacts. Analogies to past governance challenges, such as regulations targeting smog/air pollution, can help policymakers understand their role in the presence of externalised risks. Additionally, examining past governance responses to harms and risks associated with new technologies, enables policymakers to build AI governance mechanisms based on existing governance tools, rather than approaching AI governance as an unprecedented and daunting task. Moreover, governance remains an iterative exercise, in which initial governance efforts are typically crucial in enabling governments to revise and improve subsequent efforts.

Governance responses to AI are important because the failure to meet the concerns of affected parties risks creating responsibility gaps, or outcomes for which society bears the costs but no-one ultimately faces the consequences. It also inhibits the relational practice of responsibility, in which affected parties can consistently feed into the process of improving AI systems. The ability to have concerns heard and responded to is the hallmark of any working democracy. Persistent responsibility gaps threaten social trust and solidarity, by diminishing the trust that individuals and communities have both in institutions and each other. Although the concept of trust is more often used to describe the loss of trust by entities looking to use or adopt AI, the impacts of losing social trust and solidarity present even greater challenges, by threatening broader social well-being and political stability. 

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Ganesh_Policy Approaches for Building a Responsible Ecosystem.pdf

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Additional details

Additional titles

Subtitle
Contextualising AI Governance Challenges Within Other Regulatory/Governance Sectors and Histories

Funding

Bridging Responsible AI Divides AH/X007146/1
Arts and Humanities Research Council