Agile government

There’s more to life than work, and robots and AI will soon creep into other aspects of how we live: until that happens, we won’t know exactly the societal effect of such changes. It’s a problem, as any change creates ripples in our society.

Look at self-driving cars, which have the potential to massively benefit the human race. But what if someone gets in an accident with one – who is responsible? “You need whole new sets of norms, let alone laws… around who has the responsibility for the accident,” said Wendell Wallach of the University of Yale, and that could see the finger pointed at code. “We are moving into a realm where you don’t necessarily know who to blame in many situations.”

Part of the problem is “pacing”, Wallach explained. That’s the gap between legal and ethical oversight and the speed at which technologies are being deployed. “We’re falling way behind,” he said.

Wallach suggests agile governance, in which governments learn the lessons of agile software development to adapt to change more quickly. “The main thing I’m focussed on is building a global infrastructure to see if we can put some of that kind of agile governance in place for AI and robotics, and possibly synthetic biology,” he said. “But these are more like pilot projects for much broader concerns around agile governance.”

At its heart, this idea means having a “good faith” coordinating body that can bring together various stakeholders to plug the gaps in law around innovations with new regulations, technological solutions and “soft government mechanisms”. Think industry standards, insurance policies and lab practices. “The nice part about [soft governance mechanisms] is they can move more quickly and be more adaptive,” Wallach said. “And they don’t tend to get entrenched the way laws and regulations do.” On the other hand, they lack a way to punish offenders, he noted.

Agile governance won’t be easy to install, admits Wallach. “Some people think it might be complicated or a bit naive, but something such as this is needed because our present institutions don’t work very well.”