Well, I think I'm in sympathy with remarks made by my colleague.
What I can add is that it's hard to foresee specific legislation, in part because we don't have a good definition of what we mean by artificial intelligence. It's really a loose term that covers all kinds of different things. Even ideas within it that we're particularly concerned about, like machine learning...that term is itself a loose term that covers a variety of approaches that are quite different.
One of the challenges for us is the success of computing, because it has meant that things that look like artificial intelligence are all kinds of things, and they are in all kinds of domains. I think it's more likely that we will see legislation that specifically addresses a context and a use of technology, as opposed to an overarching principle.
A colleague of mine said that we are at “peak white paper”. We might be near peak principles as well. There are many statements of principles, and these are valuable. However, I think our task is to translate these into specific situations rather than to legislate all of AI, because I just don't know how to do it. There are some exceptions, though. There are a few areas where we might see overarching legislation that's of value.
One example would be that this committee has done some important work on the Cambridge Analytica scandal with its previous report. One of the challenges of that scandal for many countries around the world was that they had taken an approach to communication that said social media platforms essentially do nothing. Many governments, as you know, provide immunity to liability for online platforms or social media companies as conduits.... They did that in a very blanket way. We could say it's a terrible mistake of the United States.
This is an area where you have one legislation that affects a huge swath of activity, because it affects all use of computers to act as intermediaries or conduits between humans. The idea that you would give away freedom from liability seems like a bad one.
There are some areas where there could be broad legislative action, but I think they're rare. It's more likely that we'll see domain-specific approaches.