Responsibility, transparency, accountability: key take-aways from Adarga’s panel on AI regulation

In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hosted the first global AI Safety Summit; in the US, President Biden issued an executive order setting out new rules for companies developing the most powerful AI models; and in the EU, the draft AI Act’s proposals have come under scrutiny after facing opposition from some key member states.

Recently, Adarga’s General Counsel and Co-Chair of Adarga’s Committee for Responsible AI, Sarah Beddoes, led a panel discussion exploring the trends that we’re starting to see emerge globally in relation to AI Regulation.

The panel included:

• John Buyers, Head of Artificial Intelligence, Osborne Clarke
• Erika Mann, Senior European Policy Advisor, Covington
• Dean Harvey, Partner, Perkins Coie LLP
• Charles Morgan, Partner, McCarthy Tétrault

The event was a chance for our guests to hear about the current and possible future direction of AI regulation, including whether we might see divergence or convergence.

Some of the key takeaways were:

• There is substantial divergence among key western economies in their approach to regulating AI.
• The levels of divergence make it unlikely that substantial measures will be able to be agreed at a multinational level outside of very specific areas like lethal autonomous weapons.
• Some third countries are beginning to adopt measures similar to those proposed in leading markets.
• There is a risk that, to retain the ability to enter new markets or sell their products there, companies may have to adhere to more stringent regulatory measures.
• In defence and national security spheres which are nation specific, agreement on a multilateral approach becomes even more difficult.

Following the event, Sarah Beddoes wrote about Adarga’s approach to responsible AI and regulation:

“At Adarga, we recognise the importance of AI developers and deployers taking a responsible approach. This is at the heart of our business. Responsibility, transparency, accountability and ethics are ever-present in our work as a company at the cutting edge of AI technology.

It is why we formed the Adarga Committee for Responsible AI, which, alongside our Responsible AI Principles, guides everything we do.

The proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) has added new impetus to the debate around how governments should regulate AI and, as our event showed, there is currently a variety of proposed approaches to doing so.

Regulation is important. The regulation of AI, done correctly, will build and maintain public trust, and give businesses certainty to invest. In doing so, it will contribute to the conditions needed to incentivise responsible innovation and deployment, and allow us to enjoy the benefits that AI offers.

To achieve this, governments and regulators must strike the correct balance between regulation and innovation. In particular, they should avoid particularly burdensome regulation which would hamper the ability of SMEs to compete and grow, or make the deployment of AI in lower risk scenarios more difficult. This is why we welcomed the UK’s AI regulation white paper published in March which laid out a principles-, risk- and sector-based approach.

It is essential that, as regulators develop their approaches, they ensure that they encourage and not stifle innovation. It is only through doing so that we can ensure that the benefits of AI are enjoyed socially and that we gain and retain the strategic advantage that AI offers in an unstable world.  As Adarga expands to offer its cutting-edge AI products and services to the UK’s allies, we look forward to working with regulators both in the UK and in allied countries in order to achieve this”.

Download the full 'Global Trends in AI Regulation' panel discussion here.

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