What about Artificial Intelligence (AI) legislation? What are your thoughts?

Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

March 12, 2024

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min read

Question: What about Artificial Intelligence (AI) legislation? What are your thoughts?

‍Answer: The right way to think about Artificial Intelligence as a promising, potentially risky new tool, is to apply the general principles that we’ve learned about other new tools that have been developed that were both promising and had some potential risks.

Think of the early days of experiments in atomic power or developments and experiments in biotech. In each case, these are things that can enormously improve the human condition, but nuclear power can have some potential risks and biotech can also have some potential risks.

So, the entire apparatus of proper, safe experimenting in a controlled environment is appropriate. I do think there is a role for government if there is a known risk or known potential risk, at least for the government to be monitoring and to be insuring that safe experimental protocols are being followed.

About the author:

Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Stephen R. C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy and a Senior Scholar for The Atlas Society.

He is author of The Art of Reasoning: Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy, 2004), Nietzsche and the Nazis (Ockham’s Razor, 2010), Entrepreneurial Living (CEEF, 2016), Liberalism Pro and Con (Connor Court, 2020), Art: Modern, Postmodern, and Beyond (with Michael Newberry, 2021), Eight Philosophies of Education (2022), and Lectures on the Philosophy of Politics (Spanish translation, Publicaciones del Orden Espontáneo, 2026). He has published in Business Ethics Quarterly, Review of Metaphysics, and The Wall Street Journal. His writings have been translated into 20 languages.

He has been Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Visiting Fellow at the Social Philosophy & Policy Center in Bowling Green, Ohio, Visiting Professor at the University of Kasimir the Great, Poland, Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College of Oxford University, England, and Visiting Professor at Jagiellonian University, Poland.

His B.A. and M.A. degrees are from the University of Guelph, Canada. His Ph.D. in Philosophy is from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.

In 2010, he won his university’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

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