AI intrinsic socialist nature is showing in comments like these. It's so weird to hear companies ask for regulation while the government is saying don't worry about it. Either Google knows something mainstream AI research doesn't or it's some kind of weird deferential posturing about competencies.
Companies tend to only want regulation when they need to block out competitors by raising the bar to compete. Maybe they're worried about stealth startups that may already be ahead of them?
It's not even necessarily anticompetitive motive (though it usually is). It can arise out of NIH syndrome: "well we know this works because we did it, but we don't have as much knowledge about other things and they might be unsafe, so let's encourage standardizing around this." Whether Sundar is pitching it due to anticompete behavior or NIH syndrome is another question.
Well, also to reduce uncertainty about what the future regulatory environment will look like. If you were planning out a multi-billion dollar investment that would take years to execute, you'd want the regulation in place at the beginning when you could still plan around it rather than being surprised after you've already spent the time and money.
Yup. Just look at the current most highly regulated industries: fossil fuels and power, vehicle manufacturing, finance, pharma and healthcare, water, air transportation. There aren't many startups competing with the established companies in those spaces, and it's not because there aren't things to innovate on.
Insurance and moat building. When you're that large, the best way to minimize potential risk from new legislation involving your market is to cosy up to the regulators and make sure the regulation is written in your favour. In the process, it makes sense to sway the regulation towards raising the barrier to entry for the market.
We wouldn't want a couple of software engineers in a garage somewhere to start "the next Google", now would we?
It's called "Regulatory capture". They're trying to slow down / hinder competition, while at the same time benefiting from loopholes sewn into the legislation their lobbyists helped to create.
The Financial Times article provides a little more depth. It mentioned that Google has already decided to delay the rollout of any general-purpose facial recognition tools, in anticipation of malicious use. The FT article also calls his comments a "call for a moratorium", which is quite different than a call for heavy long-standing regulation.
His comments seem a little more driven by things like the use of cameras to identify and locate Uighur Muslims for the purpose of locking them in concentration camps in Xinjiang, where over 1.8 million Muslims are already detained [0,1], than the more civilian uses of unlocking cell phones and bank accounts.
Given that facial recognition is already good enough to be universal, including in Google Photos which is exceptional at it, you would think that ship has sailed at this point.
