The Emerging AI Regulatory Landscape
What Tech Practitioners Need to Know
Please join PyData Pittsburgh for the talk The emerging AI regulatory landscape: What technology practitioners need to know from patent attorney, space lawyer, and technology transfer maven Steven Wood. Steven's talk will touch on major developments in the legal and regulatory landscape affecting the development and use of AI technology, including the EU AI Act, the US Executive Order on the "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI", export controls, concerns around intellectual property and copyright, and more.
About the talk
Current advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have created much excitement and concern with experts across industry, academia, and government considering both the present and future capabilities of and potential existential threats posed by AI. AI experts, politicians, policymakers, and others have called for regulation and controls on the development and proliferation of AI, some going so far as to suggest that AI represents an extinction-level threat to humanity.
Currently, various regulatory regimes relating to the development and standardization of AI technologies exist and need to be considered. The specific laws depend in part on geographic location, as jurisdictions such as the European Union (EU) already have their own legislation (EU AI Act) and more than 30 US States have started regulating AI, enacting over 50 state-level laws in the absence of broad federal legislation. Further, international efforts between the EU and US seek to provide support and leadership in international standardization efforts by collaborating on development of technical AI standards, some currently underway before the International Organization for Standardization. These standards impact the design, operation, measurement, evaluation, and risk management of trustworthy AI.
In January 2023, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published its Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and the National Institute of Standards and Technology released an AI Risk Management Framework. On October 30, 2023, building on earlier work, including an executive order directing agencies to combat algorithmic discrimination and obtaining voluntary commitments from major US companies (such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI) to engage in safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) on the "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI". In early February 2024, the White House announced that the tasked executive agencies had completed all 90-day actions mandated by this order.
Additional regulatory landscape considerations important to AI include export controls under International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR), as well as patentability considerations before the US Patent & Trademark Office. Further critical developments at the intersection with Intellectual Property include the various lawsuits alleging copyright infringement in the training of Large Language Models like Chat-GPT, etc.
With so much action around AI technologies development and regulation, it can be challenging to closely track and understand the implications of everything as it continues to evolve so dynamically. Nevertheless, this academic review will endeavor to provide an accurate snapshot of the current legal regimes and regulatory landscapes impacting AI and its use as a practical guide for AI developers and entrepreneurs.
About the speaker
Steven Wood is a U.S. patent attorney and space lawyer and he currently holds roles as Senior of Counsel with the Vela Wood Law Firm in Austin, TX, where he focuses his practice on IP strategies and investment due diligence for patent portfolios, and as Senior Director of Neuromorphic Technology Development with the SUNY Albany College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, where he coordinates research efforts with the Air Force Research Labs funded NeuroPipes neuromorphic computing research group. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at Albany Law School, the nation’s oldest independent school of law. Steven has held prior roles as a patent examiner at the United States Patent & Trademark Office, and in technology transfer offices at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Leiden University and most recently at The Research Foundation for The State University of New York (SUNY) as Associate Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Steven also previously held several positions with startup companies, including XCOR Aerospace, and as Co-Founder of 'trakkies. International BV', a Dutch Internet of Things startup company, incubated at the European Space Agency Business Incubation Center in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Throughout his career, Steven has built expertise in space law, patents and IP, including protection and valuation, entrepreneurship and startups, Bayh-Dole compliance for inventions supported by federal grants and contracts, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR), and Other Transaction Authority (OTA) awards, technology transfer and commercialization, and licensing and other technology-centered transactions.