Hello and welcome to June’s special edition of Fortune’s Eye on A.I.
Political fights are won and lost over narratives. Tell a better story than your opponents and you’re likely to win. Framing is everything—which means picking the right metaphors or analogies can be crucial. So it was fascinating to watch Microsoft policy chief Brad Smith trial various ways of framing the A.I. regulation debate while speaking to reporters in Europe earlier this week.
Smith was in Europe to give an address at a conference in Brussels, where the European Union is currently in the final stages of negotiating its landmark A.I. Act. And Smith’s speech was about how policy positions Microsoft recently announced on A.I. regulation might align with the A.I. Act, and also some things the company would like to see in the law’s final version.
As I’ve written about previously for Fortune, Microsoft is pushing a package of policies. Some of the points in the company’s A.I. regulation blueprint include what it calls “safety brakes” on the use of A.I. in critical infrastructure, like power grids and city traffic management systems, that would allow humans to quickly take back control from an automated system if something began to go awry. It has also called for regulations that would be similar to “know your customer” rules in financial services, where those making A.I. software would be required to “know your cloud, know your customer, and know your content.” Microsoft has come out in favor of licensing requirements for those creating “highly capable” foundation models and running large data centers where such models are trained. While safety brakes, licensing, and Smith’s KYC rules are not in the EU A.I. Act, he said in his speech and an accompanying blog post that implementing such rules would “be key to meeting both the spirit and obligations of the act.”
What was new in Smith’s discussion with reporters were some of the analogies he used. He said he particularly favored comparisons between international A.I. regulation and civil aviation as a way to think about international governance of A.I. He pointed to the International Civil Aviation Organization, which was created in 1944 and is based in Montreal, as a possible model. Almost every nation on Earth, 192 in total, is a member of the organization. “The ICAO has fostered a common approach to safety standards,” Smith said. “Both the testing of safety when the aircraft are being designed and built, and their application and an ongoing monitoring of their safety is very similar when you step back and think about it to what people are talking about for foundational models.”
