Google CEO says the industry should be trusted to regulate AI

In an interview with The Washington Post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that concerns about potentially harmful applications of artificial intelligence (AI) are legitimate, but that the industry should be trusted to regulate the development and use of the technology in a responsible manner. Pichai argued that technology companies should not merely build technology and ‘fix it ‘afterward; instead, they should think in advance about how the technology could be abused, and develop ethical guidelines to avoid such abuses. While being optimistic about the long-term benefits of AI, Google’s chief also noted that the tech industry had to ensure that AI ‘with agency of its own’ does not harm humanity. Speaking about the attempts made by governments worldwide to assess the potential need for AI-specific regulation, he argued that ‘regulating a technology in its early days in hard’ and AI ‘companies should self-regulate.​