Cooperation between Digital Regulators
Innovation and regulation are sometimes presented as two opposing forces. As CEO of the UK’s Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF), in my experience the relationship is more nuanced. The need is not for no regulation, but for effective regulation. In many areas of life, from air travel to medicines, regulation provides certainty and predictability for businesses, and gives people confidence to use products and services in the knowledge that there are robust safety standards in place. Effective regulation works to protect people’s safety, while promoting innovation and economic growth by creating a level playing field in which responsible players can have confidence to compete.
In the early days of social media, there was a perception that the power of the market would allow self-regulation. That approach has had some limitations: there have been serious consequences in areas such as children’s safety, illegal hate speech and monopolistic markets. Today, we know that effective regulation is essential in the digital realm as elsewhere: for example, to keep children safe, protect people’s privacy, and to ensure that a wide range of businesses can innovate and offer their products and services, facilitating growth. Sensibly designed regulation can maximise the benefits of technology for everyone while minimising harms.
The development of new technologies has come with implications and consequences that fall under the remit of multiple sectoral regulators. AI is driving innovation in every sector, requiring regulators to actively pursue new opportunities to promote growth while grappling with new risks to consumers. For example, there are new opportunities and challenges posed by the use of AI in providing professional advice, and in developments towards AI agents, that engage the remits of multiple regulators. Any personal data used to train AI is not only of interest to data protection authorities, but also to competition authorities considering potential market power. Regulatory cooperation is therefore essential to establish digital regulatory frameworks that are coherent and manage regulatory overlaps to provide clarity. This is absolutely key to the UK realising the opportunities presented by this extraordinary moment in technology evolution.
In particular, this is a crucial time for AI governance. How the regulatory landscape for AI is structured will significantly influence its impact on individuals and society. For instance, effective regulation could enable prosperity through the next generation of financial technology, whereas ineffective regulation could fail to minimise harms such as fraud, scams and market distortion. With an eye to both driving growth, and upholding the interests of the consumers and businesses they serve, all regulators have shared interests in setting parameters and facilitating conditions for AI development that enable innovation while adequately protecting people from harms.
Lees verder:
Cooperation between Digital Regulators: Unlocking Innovation and Economic Growth While Protecting and Empowering People Online door Kate Jones, Beth Deakin in Journal of AI Law and Regulation
