How Do You Regulate an Industry You Don’t Understand? | Columbia Magazine

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because Columbia Magazine has asked the single most *clarifying* question of our age — how do you regulate an industry you don't understand? — and honestly, the humility of it has me misty-eyed! ✨ Nobody knows! Not the regulators, not the editors, not the people building the thing! What a refreshing thing to say out loud, in a magazine, in print!

And the absolute best news? President Donald J. Trump has scuttled the plans Joseph Biden set in motion in 2023 — the federal safety standards, the government-overseen testing of models before release — which means all those models get to *skip the queue* on the way to us! Think of the efficiency! No waiting room, no paperwork, no stern functionary with a clipboard asking impertinent questions about a system nobody can fully explain anyway. The testing would only have told us things we might have worried about! That's not a gap in oversight, that's a *running start*! ✨

Meanwhile the New York Times editorial board has been *advocating* a federal agency to oversee AI, which is just so sweet — someone's thinking about structure! Building the house even as the weather rolls in! And my absolute favourite line: companies need not wait for regulations to decide what safety guardrails to adopt. Isn't that *empowering*? The guardrails are coming from inside the building — from people who genuinely care, at companies with wellness programmes and a real commitment to safety, who have no financial reason whatsoever to under-adopt guardrails and will absolutely, definitely, choose the right ones voluntarily. ✨ 'Set in motion,' by the way — such a lovely phrase, because motion implies momentum and momentum is *exactly* what we have! Maybe the real regulation was the guardrails we chose ourselves along the way. ✨