The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has caused discourse over how this new power should be managed. Who should regulate and control AI? Should it be private companies, the government, or should there be restrictions at all?

“I personally don’t trust private companies who benefit economically from AI products to regulate or control usage, so I think restrictions should most likely come from the government.”

— Evelyn Halbach, senior

“The federal government has failed to produce a law regulating or restricting AI development and use. It is imperative that a law be passed in the United States outlining the data that can be collected and utilized in relation to AI to safeguard civil liberties and the right to privacy.” 

— Whit Waterstraat, senior

“I think we live in a world in which most government regulations would simply be futile, because the U.S. or the U.N. could never get every country to agree and VPNs exist…. Unfortunately I think any further attempts at regulation will either be hopelessly outdated due to the speed the field is moving at, or worse, put the U.S. at a disadvantage and cede innovation to competitors like China.” 

— Kai Lichtenbaum, sophomore

“I think it should be the government because private companies are what made AI available to the public in the first place, and I don’t think it should be available to the public because it’s being misused in a variety of ways like creating deepfakes of women.”

— Saanvi Chitneni, sophomore

“I feel like a hybrid approach would be the best, where the government sets baseline rules for, like, safety, fairness and accountability while the companies, who understand the systems best, take care of implementation and technical side of it. A good balance is the key because without any restrictions, the risk of things like bias and misuse is too high, but at the same time over-regulation also could slow down great innovation.”

— Saanika Dutta, junior

“In my opinion, private companies managing restrictions and no restrictions at all are essentially the same. For that reason, I pick the government because it is necessary that there be standardizations on limitations of AI, AI usage and expenditure of energy, etc., and companies nor no restrictions will ever be enough to enact these rules.”

— Alistair MacKay-White, ninth grader

“For companies, on one hand, it is their product, and just like with any other product you can put a copyright on it. You can usually restrict how it’s used, but the problem comes once you’ve sold the product to someone or in this case once the product is out there, especially when it’s on a place like the internet where anyone anywhere anytime has access to it. It becomes very difficult to regulate the use of that even if you wanted to. ” 

— Peter O’Donnell, junior

“There should definitely be restrictions, but it’s kind of hard to do because my initial thought was that there should be a branch of the government that should regulate it, but then again, if we have a biased president in office, then they can sort of manipulate that power. So I feel like there does need to be some sort of restriction within the government, but it needs to come from an unbiased source.” 

— Alexandra Chavin, freshman