Miguel Afonso Caetano"The calculation on the part of tech executives appears to be that deregulation is a winning political bet. But trust in AI is lower in the US than it is in the EU, where regulation at least signals that someone is responsible for protecting the public interest.
For the moment, the protests are fragmented: environmental protesters, child safety campaigners, democracy advocates and labour activists are not speaking with one voice. Whoever manages to unite these groups by building a popular AI regulation movement will tap into new political power.
AI companies have spent years presenting tech products as too strategically important to regulate, and politicians as too technically incompetent to govern them. But if companies want to behave like states, surveilling people, curating information flows and restructuring labour markets, then citizens will seek to hold them accountable as states. If not with legislation, then with their wallets. The “botlash” is a potent political force."
https://www.ft.com/content/ecead6b9-eb42-4a85-bd33-073c659e84bf