Strategic Intelligence: The Global AI Regulatory Landscape

Strategic Intelligence: The Global AI Regulatory Landscape

Summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology with the potential to bring significant societal benefits. However, its development also creates ethical challenges and poses security risks. The role of regulation is to identify and mitigate against these risks. Regulation can also accelerate AI adoption by providing legal certainty and enhanced public trust.

Over the last few years, as numerous governments have started developing AI regulation, different regulatory approaches have emerged. The EU’s approach aims to protect the consumer. The US approach prioritizes protecting businesses, particularly AI companies, while in countries like China, AI regulation seeks to protect the government.

Key Highlights

• The common challenge of the different approaches is ensuring regulations remain relevant to a technology that is evolving quickly while not hampering innovation. However, there is no evidence that a higher level of regulation is detrimental to innovation, as both the EU and China are key players in AI while also shaping the AI regulatory agenda. What is true is that legal certainty is paramount for companies that need to make investment decisions on AI, and a lack of regulation could discourage investments in the long run.
• The EU is the global leader in AI regulation. Its first-mover advantage means it can set the agenda and define the terms of the discussion for all nations. The next few years will be decisive for the EU’s enforcement of its AI Act, which could demonstrate to the world that a risk-based approach targeting general-purpose AI (GPAI) models can work.

• This report analyzes AI regulatory approaches in 11 territories: the EU, the US, China, India, the UK, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
• It provides an overview of regulatory approaches, evaluating both the focus and the strength of AI regulation.
• It also includes analysis of key trends impacting AI regulation, including frontier AI and the global AI skills shortage.

• As more and more organizations embed AI systems into their products, services, and decision-making processes, the debate around whether and how much regulation is needed to ensure these systems are safe increases in importance. The pace of adoption of AI systems worldwide is rapid, and AI regulation and governance have struggled to keep up. Over the last few years, numerous governments have begun to look at implementing AI regulatory systems. The main challenge is ensuring regulations remain relevant to a technology that evolves quickly while not hampering innovation.
• This report gives a clear, concise overview of an issue that will have significant implications for companies in all industries.