US rejects ‘FDA for AI’ at G20

Chapel Hill (US), Sep 1 (IANS) The United States has warned G20 economies against establishing a pre-approval system for Artificial Intelligence (AI), saying an “FDA for AI” would delay new products and undermine innovation.

David Sacks, a former White House AI czar, said governments should generally apply existing laws and regulatory agencies to AI instead of creating an entirely new approval structure.

“The one approach that I think we would really oppose that we think would be a disaster for us in the US, is this so-called FDA for AI,” Sacks told a G20 session on emerging technologies.

He said such a system would resemble the approval procedures used by the US Food and Drug Administration for medicines or the Federal Aviation Administration for aircraft.

New medicines and aircraft can take years to secure approval, while AI companies are introducing new models every two months, he said.

“It’s just too dynamic and fast-moving for that type of approach,” Sacks said. “And I don’t think we want to hamstring our innovation that way.”

The remarks offered a clear US position as G20 members consider how to regulate emerging technologies without obstructing investment, experimentation and economic growth.

Sacks said AI was not operating in the absence of regulation. Existing statutes already cover fraud, discrimination, privacy violations, defective products, copyright infringement and non-consensual imagery, he said.

“There’s already a lot of laws that apply to AI,” Sacks said. “And if we’re gonna build on them, we should try to build on the laws and regulatory agencies that we already have.”

He said additional transparency requirements, disclosures and audits could be considered. Antitrust law could also be used if technology markets developed into monopolies or duopolies, he added.

Sacks compared a new AI approval authority to the US Department of Motor Vehicles, which is often associated with long waits and bureaucratic delays.

“I think that any new regulatory agency that has to approve AI product releases will become like a DMV for AI where, you know, new models get stuck in a long queue waiting for approval,” he said.

Sacks said the success of Silicon Valley rested on what he called “permissionless innovation”. That principle allowed entrepreneurs to develop products without first seeking approval from Washington, he said.

“That is really the principle that’s made Silicon Valley so successful,” Sacks said.

He cited Meta and Google as companies that were started by young founders in modest settings before growing into businesses valued at more than $1 trillion.

“If those founders had to go to Washington to get approval for their products, I just don’t know that those founders would have been able to navigate the sort of bureaucratic maze to get their products approved,” he said.

Sacks said governments could regulate products after they became successful and their effects were better understood. Requiring advance approval, however, risked eliminating the environment that allowed new companies and technologies to emerge.

He also described the current expansion of artificial intelligence in the United States as a new industrial revolution. About USD 800 billion was being invested in AI-related infrastructure this year, with the figure expected to reach USD 1.4 trillion next year, he said.

“We really haven’t seen a build-out of this kind of infrastructure,” Sacks said. “You have to go all the way back to the railroads in the 1800s to see something of equal scale.”

The Group of 20 comprises 19 countries, the European Union and the African Union. Its members include both major developers of artificial intelligence and emerging economies seeking access to the technology and its economic benefits.

–IANS

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