EDITORIAL: Compromise on RAISE Act must put public’s interests first |
Public officials are faced with a lot of pressure from a lot of different and powerful sources.
That pressure becomes particularly strong when the legislation they’re considering involves a new industry for which regulations haven’t been fully formulated and for which millions or billions of dollars are at stake.
Industry representatives, representatives from the financial community and business groups pay big money to powerful lobbyists to push for legislation that will allow their business model to proceed with the least amount of government regulation.
Often on the other side are groups representing responsible government, the environment, public safety and civil rights.
Lawmakers also face political pressure to act in a certain way or be forced to deal with the consequences.
When making the decision as to whether to regulate such industries and how stringent and expensive to make those regulations, there’s only one constituency that should matter to our elected officials — the people you were elected to serve.
And when it comes to regulation of the burgeoning Artificial Intelligence industry — which has an almost infinite amount of positive and negative effects on the public — our elected leaders should lean in favor of protecting the people with strong safeguards until more can be learned about the potential harm the industry can generate.
They can always soften the regulations once they learn more about the impacts of the industry. It’s much more difficult to impose more stringent safeguards once the industry has moved forward without them.........