AI’s risks—and its policy solutions—are often more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Matt O’Shaughnessy is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Matt O’Shaughnessy was a visiting fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he applies his technical background in machine learning to research on the geopolitics and global governance of technology. His work examines the impacts of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies on democracy, inequality, and human rights.
Before joining the Carnegie Endowment, Matt received his PhD from Georgia Tech’s Center for Machine Learning. His technical research developed mathematical tools that use structure hidden in data to help scientists understand complex systems, including applications in the efficient collection of high-dimensional data, explaining black-box machine learning systems, and causal inference.
AI’s risks—and its policy solutions—are often more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Despite its authoritarian origins, the draft offers lessons for building a truly democratic framework.
America’s AI policy has been—and likely will remain—a mosaic of individual agency approaches and narrow legislation rather than a centralized strategy.
A closer look at one of the most accepted norms for AI systems—algorithmic transparency— demonstrates the challenges inherent in incorporating democratic values into technology.
Policymakers can study the measures’ successes and failures to guide their own regulatory approaches.
The notion that algorithmic systems should be "explainable" is common in the many statements of consensus principles developed by governments, companies, and advocacy organizations.
The challenges to meaningfully defining and implementing a democratic vision for AI are significant, requiring financial, technical and political capital. Policymakers must make real investments to address them if “democratic values” are meant to be more than the brand name for an economic alliance.
Subtle differences in wording can have major impacts on some of the most important problems facing policymakers.