A Historical Model for AI Regulation and Collaboration

Lilian Coral, vice president of New America's Technology and Democracy programs and head of the Open Technology Institute, wrote an article published in Stanford Social Innovation Review about what the Human Genome Project can teach us about channeling a revolutionary technology for public benefit—and why nuclear weapons are a counter-productive analogy.

Instead of hoarding access to AI and focusing solely on risk mitigation, universities, national laboratories, and industries from around the world need to work together to advance the technology’s benefits. This may seem like an overly hopeful, impossible task, but not too long ago, humanity successfully accomplished such collaboration and advanced the benefits of another controversial technology: genetic sequencing. In 1990, governments around the world, with the leadership of the United States, began a 13-year effort to map human DNA through the Human Genome Project (HGP). I believe we can achieve such cooperation again to ensure AI advancements help humanity thrive.