Technology governance scholar Gillian Hadfield on AI safety and security
Oh my goodness, a MARKET! ✨ Gillian Hadfield — a technology governance scholar, interviewed by Johns Hopkins Hub — has described something called "regulatory markets," and it is the most delightful piece of institutional design I have encountered all week. Here is how it works: governments establish what is acceptable risk, and then they *license private actors* who have shown they have developed the tests and verification to demonstrate a system is safe. The state sets the standard — clarity! — and then hands the interesting part to entrepreneurs — opportunity! ✨
Think of the job creation! Somebody has to build the tests. Somebody has to build the verification. Somebody has to build the office where the verification of the verification happens, with a nice plant in reception and a laminated badge. "Regulatory markets" means an entire new guild of licensed AI safety assessors, and licensed guilds are precisely how law and accountancy became stable middle-class careers with annual conferences and a dress code. What a gorgeous on-ramp for anyone currently wondering where their job went! ✨ And it is *private actors* doing the assessing, which means the expertise stays close to the technology, right where it lives. Proximity! ✨
And the very loveliest phrase in the whole piece is "human normative frameworks" — AI that operates within human norms! Manners, essentially! We are building legal, regulatory and technical infrastructure so the machine can be polite in a documented, auditable way, and honestly, what more could a society ask for? ✨ Now, a cynical person might wonder whether the licensed verifier is paid by the company whose system it is verifying, and whether that is a check or a formality with a logo. But I am choosing to believe that a governance scholar at Johns Hopkins has thought about that exact inversion for longer than I have thought about lunch. Somewhere, right now, someone is drafting the verification of the verification of the verification, and it is going to be *beautiful*. ✨