With polls showing the public wanting more government oversight of artificial intelligence – AI leaders themselves begging Congress and the White House to step in – what’s a sensible path forward at both the federal and state levels? Patrick McLaughlin, the Hoover Institution’s Shepard Family Fellow in Economics, discusses how to avoid what he calls “the 50-state tollbooth problem” for AI – as in shipping on the Rhine in medieval Germany, a challenge in keeping traffic moving without too many inconveniences. Also discussed: why regulatory reform and the concept of lowering consumers' prices by thinning red tape isn’t part of the election-year conversation, how Idaho, Virginia and British Columbia made deregulation work in their respective lands, and what a pair of November ballot initiatives in California – one promising more affordable housing, the other addressing a notorious environmental statute – say about life in America’s most regulated state.
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