In New York Times, Professor Frank Pasquale Urges Federal Government to Prioritize Regulation of AI

In a New York Times op-ed, Professor Frank Pasquale, an expert on the law of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and machine learning, and co-author Gianclaudio Malgieri point to a recent proposal by the European Union to create regulations around the use of AI, and urges the United States to harmonize its approach with Europe’s.

The authors cite several concerns about the unfettered use of AI, for example, danger of harm to people caused by driverless cars and risk of discrimination by programs that help make hiring decisions.

Some initiative has come from the states, “but the rise of AI requires a more coordinated nationwide response, guided by first principles that clearly identify the threats that substandard or unproven AI poses. The United States can learn from the European Union’s proposed A.I. regulation,” the authors write. Federal agencies “need to act more aggressively now, while the technology is still developing.”

Pasquale is the author of New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI (Harvard University Press, 2020), which analyzes the law and policy influencing the adoption of AI in varied professional fields, and The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Harvard University Press, 2015), which was the recent subject of an interdisciplinary symposium hosted by the journal Big Data & Society.

He served on the Council for Big Data, Ethics, and Society from 2014-16, and the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics from 2019-2021, where he chaired the Subcommittee on Privacy, Confidentiality, and Security.