{"text":[[{"start":6.55,"text":"The writer was director of the national AI office under President Joe Biden and US Ambassador to the OECD from 2009-12"}],[{"start":15.100000000000001,"text":"Last Thursday, the White House scrapped an executive order that would have standardised pre-release safety testing of advanced AI models. Once again, those advocating a trust-but-verify approach lost to the no-holds-barred camp."}],[{"start":29.05,"text":"AI currently operates in an accountability-free zone. As it replaces existing systems throughout the economy, its black-box algorithms cannot easily be bound by rules written for humans. The question is no longer whether these tools will proliferate, but whether the terms are set by democratic choice or the companies moving fastest. The risks of getting this wrong are serious. Chatbots giving medical advice face neither the malpractice liability nor the licensing oversight of human doctors. In the US, governments can use error-prone AI systems to deny benefits without citizens’ recourse to explanation from or appeal to a human."}],[{"start":70.25,"text":"US courts are struggling to apply existing law. A lawsuit against OpenAI alleges product liability and competition violations, which it denies, for conduct for which “every therapist, teacher, and human being would face criminal prosecution.” The court must decide whether a chatbot is even a product, and if it can be held liable for competing unfairly with humans by doing what humans legally cannot."}],[{"start":95.9,"text":"This “accountability arbitrage” to gain market dominance is not new. US social media companies perfected the playbook, using a legal loophole to sidestep media norms that require news outlets to carry liability insurance and uphold editorial standards. Uber said it was a technology platform, not a taxi company; its drivers were gig workers, not employees. Airbnb argued it owed no hotel taxes and was not bound by zoning or building-safety rules."}],[{"start":125.55000000000001,"text":"As AI spreads, it threatens to open a society-wide loophole in democratic governance. The laws around human conduct hold people to account for the harms they cause. If algorithms sit outside those rules, and no new standards take their place, the choice of which harms to tolerate falls, by default, to the first movers. Without public standards, competitive pressure rewards corner-cutting. In February, Anthropic softened its policy to guarantee safety measures before release, noting that without rules for all those “with the weakest protections would set the pace”. "}],[{"start":158.9,"text":"Past US governments built new frameworks for new technologies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves construction, inspects plants and demands incident reporting; operators face strict, no-fault liability. Companies making cars, drugs and aircraft are governed by a mix of existing tools, including liability, and purpose-built regimes that are imperfect, often slow and frequently captured. Such flaws are an argument to modernise them, alongside new AI-specific safety rules, not to abdicate public governance."}],[{"start":193.05,"text":"After ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, several governments took first steps. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October 2023 directing federal agencies to address AI in their sectors and to test the most advanced models. Days later, at Bletchley Park, 28 countries, including the UK, US, China and EU member states, agreed to co-operate on frontier-AI risks. The EU passed its AI Act in May 2024."}],[{"start":222.8,"text":"The momentum in the US has shifted. Donald Trump, elected with industry support, revoked Biden’s order and has focused on bolstering domestic AI giants to stay ahead of China. The order scrapped last week would have slightly softened that stance. Even that was too much."}],[{"start":239,"text":"Progress elsewhere faces stiff resistance. After the US Department of Justice joined a lawsuit by xAI, Colorado watered down its first-in-the-nation law that would have imposed pre-deployment responsibility on AI systems involved in consequential decisions such as those concerning employment or housing. The venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and industry allies poured more than $100mn into political spending against state AI rules, including over $3mn to defeat the congressional candidate who co-wrote New York’s safety-plan law. "}],[{"start":273,"text":"Polls indicate growing concern about unfettered AI. On Monday, Pope Leo XIV endorsed a central role for governments, writing, “it is necessary to establish adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power.” He rightly accuses most people of, “watching and waiting . . . merely hoping for the best”. Instead, citizens and elected representatives have a clear responsibility to update governance mechanisms so that AI rewards innovation, rather than evading accountability."}],[{"start":310.55,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1780054162_6867.mp3"}