Recently, we’ve been witnessing the rapid spread of a deregulatory movement for privacy and AI. Spurred in significant part by the Trump Administration, the U.S. has started to deregulate technology. The EU has caught the virus and has been contemplating weaking its regulation as well. As Luiza Jarovsky notes, some policymakers in the EU are aiming to “simplify” the GDPR and are increasingly being lured by the siren cries of tech companies complaining about EU regulation. For example, the Draghi Report (Sept. 2024) complains that EU privacy and AI regulations “create the risk of European companies being excluded from early AI innovations” and recommends “light-handed rules.” In a terrific piece, Europe Could Lose What Makes It Great, Anu Bradford, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Tommaso Pavone fear that “the EU seems poised to trade away its leverage as a global regulatory superpower.”

AI Companies – Please Regulate Us . . . Actually, Please Don’t

In 2023, AI company CEOs welcomed regulation. They wanted to ameliorate concerns that AI was developing so quickly and recklessly. But now, their true colors have been revealed. Now that the winds have shifted toward deregulation, these companies have changed their tune. Like nearly all companies, they never really wanted to be regulated; they just wanted to create the illusion that were being responsible and the mirage that there were guardrails.

When the AI companies initially called for regulation, I wasn’t fooled, and so I created a cartoon.

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