Regulating AI and machine learning: setting the regulatory agenda

Disruptive technologies arrive with regularity. Whether it is the first industrial revolution with steam powered factories and transportation, or subsequent revolutions which brought about chemical engineering, communications revolutions, aviation and eventually biotechnology and digitisation. We stand at the edge of the next revolution the AI revolution where methods of artificial intelligence and machine learning offer possibilities hitherto unimagined. How this revolution develops and how our society absorbs the potential of this new technology will be largely determined by the models of regulation and governance applied to the nascent technology. In this paper the authors examine lessons from history and propose a framework for identifying and analysing the key elements of regulatory regimes and their interactions which can form the basis for developing a new model for for AI regulatory systems. Furthermore, it argues that the goals of such systems should be to manage the risks different models and uses of AI pose, not just the ethical issues they create.