Bradley Merrill Thompson, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in the International Bar Association, in “AI: US and EU Policymakers Move to Regulate After Industry Rings Alarm Bells,” by William Roberts.

Following is an excerpt:

The artificial intelligence (AI) bot ChatGPT, launched in November, has sparked the world’s collective imagination about what AI can do. Previously the domain of computer scientists and science fiction movies, AI is now the subject of significant attention in the US and beyond.

US policymakers are rushing to put guardrails around AI before it gets away from them. A robust debate is underway in Washington about how to both promote innovation in AI and safeguard the public amid a wider competition with China and Europe. “The primary domains for AI having an impact, at least in the near term, are areas like employment, healthcare, finance and consumer marketing,” says Bradley Merrill Thompson, a member at law firm Epstein Becker Green in Washington, DC. …

However, Thompson doesn’t “see a role, contrary to the European model which everyone sort of wants to follow, of a generalised regulatory paradigm for AI for the US. I just don’t think our legal system is built the same way. We have federal agencies that are domain experts at monitoring and tracking and regulating activities” in key areas, Thompson explains. …

Meanwhile, the emergence of AI systems adds a whole new layer of complexity to data privacy issues. As AI advances, it’s being used to predict consumer behaviour based on personal data. And at the recent Senate hearing, senators worried about the impact of AI fakes on public opinion heading into the 2024 US presidential election and whether creative artists and musicians can assert intellectual property rights over AI products that mimic their work. “We all have to be humble about our forecasts and forecasting is such a hard thing,” says Thompson. “But the fact of the matter is, there’s an awful lot of applications for AI at this juncture.”

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