Toward the Agile and Comprehensive International Governance of AI and Robotics [point of view]

Rapidly emerging technologies, such as AI and robotics, present a serious challenge to traditional models of government regulation. These technologies are advancing so quickly that in many sectors, traditional regulation cannot keep up, given the cumbersome procedural and bureaucratic procedures and safeguards that modern legislative and rulemaking processes require. Consequently, regulatory systems will predictively fail to put in place appropriately tailored regulatory measures by the time new applications of fast-moving technologies begin to affect society. Perhaps even worse, if a regulatory system does somehow manage to rush into place new regulations for an emerging technology, they will likely be obsolete by the time the ink dries on the enactment. Given this so-called “pacing problem,” traditional regulatory approaches will either produce no regulation or bad regulation [1].