We can't regulate if we don't know

This is from the US but the idea is common enough here: .

@POTUS: Realizing the promise of AI by managing the risks is going to require new laws, regulations, and oversight.

In the weeks ahead I’m going to continue to take executive action to help America lead the way toward responsible innovation.

This is impossible. We do not know what AI will be useful for. We do not know what it can actually do, what we want done, better than other ways of doing that thing (OK, other than writing C grade essays at GCSE level). We also do not know what might be a problem with what AI can do. We don’t know the benefits, we don’t know the risks.

We face, that is, radical uncertainty. So it’s impossible for us to plan anything. For planning assumes that we have an idea of the cost/benefit analysis so that we can say do that, don’t do t’other. And if we are radically uncertain then we can’t do that, can we?

We have to experiment to find out that is - which is what the market process is, experimentation to find out. Where is that confluence between what this new technology can do and the list of things that people want done?

Given that the people developing AI have no clear knowledge here, we the potential consumers have no idea then how are bureaucrats - armed as they are with the wrong incentives to boot - going to have a fogged clue?

We do already have those general and necessary rules - don’t kill people, don’t poison them, no libel, no incitement to violence and all the other rules that make up a civilised society. But we can’t go any further than that general structure because we simply do not know.

This is something the would be planners never will grasp, let alone admit. You can’t plan uncertainty. The lack of knowledge means that you cannot direct activity. It’s exactly when we don’t know that we’ve got to leave well alone so that we can find out from the undirected experimentation of market processes.

They’re using as their excuse to intervene the exact reason they should be doing absolutely nothing.

What’s AI gonna do? Dunno. So, how you goin’ to plan it then?