Given the pace of AI development, policymakers and civil society must step in now to ensure that the next general-purpose technology serves the public interest. Otherwise, already dominant monopolists will supercharge the socially harmful digital business models they perfected over the past decade.
LONDON – This month’s AI Action Summit in Paris comes at a critical juncture in the development of artificial intelligence. At issue is not whether Europe can compete with China and the United States in an AI arms race; it is whether Europeans can pioneer a different approach that puts public value at the center of technological development and governance. The task is to move away from Digital Feudalism, a term I wrote about in 2019 to describe the dominant digital platforms’ model of rent extraction.