AI is transforming a diverse range of industries, from finance and manufacturing to agriculture and healthcare, by enhancing their operations and reshaping the nature of work. AI is enabling smarter fleet management and logistics, optimizing energy forecasting, creating more efficient use of hospital beds by analyzing patient data and predictive modeling, improving quality control in advanced manufacturing, and creating personalized consumer experiences. It is also being adopted by governments that see its ability to deliver better service to citizens at lower cost to taxpayers. With global private sectors investing in AI, the investment levels are now 18 times higher than in 2013.5 AI is potentially a powerful driver of economic growth and a key enabler of public services.
However, the risks and unintended consequences of GenAI are also real. A text-generation engine that can convincingly imitate a range of registers is open to misuse; voice-imitation software can mimic an individual’s speech patterns well enough to convince a bank, workplace or friend. Chatbots can cheat at tests. AI platforms can reinforce and perpetuate historical human biases (e.g., based on gender, race or sexual orientation), undermine personal rights, compromise data security, produce misinformation and disinformation, destabilize the financial system and cause other forms of disruption globally. The stakes are high.
Legislators, regulators and standard setters are starting to develop frameworks to maximize AI’s benefits to society while mitigating its risks. These frameworks need to be resilient, transparent and equitable. To provide a snapshot of the evolving regulatory landscape, the EY organization (EY) has analyzed the regulatory approaches of eight jurisdictions: Canada, China, the European Union (EU), Japan, Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). The rules and policy initiatives were sourced from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) AI policy observatory6 and are listed in the appendix to the full report.