Dean Ball: AI Policy Overindexes on Chatbots, Risks Being Caught Flat-Footed by Fast Shifts
deanwball · x · 2026-07-22
The author argues that while it's relevant and important that the vast majority of Americans still encounter advanced AI through chatbot and social media surfaces, AI policy tends to overindex on the "current thing" and gets caught flat-footed by fast but predictable shifts.
He uses the EU AI Act as an example: it was mostly designed to regulate narrow statistical models used in regulated environments, with general-purpose superintelligence oversight bolted on relatively last minute. As a result, the EU spent years developing a GDPR-like framework for narrow ML, only to be caught off guard by the sudden rise of chatbots.
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