Mau comments on A Map to Navigate AI Governance

[Mau]

Thanks for this! It felt a bit clarifying to me to try to group the 17 AI governance activities discussed in this post and to think about how they relate to the activities discussed in the Clarke post you mentioned. I tentatively think it’s useful to see the activities discussed in this post as a set of (non-exhaustive nor disjoint) sub-activities within the broader activities described in Clarke’s post, in this way:

Strategy research and tactics research:

• Researching macro strategy

• Applied research

• (Both this post and Clarke’s post carve up research that isn’t policy development into two categories. The Clarke post seems to carve up that research space by the scope of the goals being identified, while this post seems to carve up the space by the scope of the issue areas being researched. I suspect the former distinction is more useful specifically for thinking about, “What needs to be figured out first?”. After all, we need to know what high-level goals are good to figure out what low-level goals are good. But we don’t need issue-general insights to have issue-specific insights.)

Policy development:

• Getting new information about what policies to develop:

  • A part of industry coalition or network building: getting info about how much support there is for various potential policies

  • A part of PR & comms: corporate executives getting info about how various actions would impact their company’s image

  • Evaluating policy

  • A part of corporate governance: figuring out what high-level corporate policies to implement

• Using information you already have to create policy recommendations:

  • Designing policy recommendations

  • A part of standards-setting: figuring out what standards to set

  • A part of industry coalition or network building: using info about how much other companies support various policies to inform policy development

  • A part of PR & comms: using company image considerations to inform policy development

Policy advocacy:

• Advocacy to government:

  • Advocating & lobbying (in a government context)

  • A part of PR & comms: companies communicating advocacy messages to influence government policies

• Advocacy to other companies:

  • A part of industry coalition or network building: advocating proposed policies to other companies

  • A part of industry norm building: advocating for an industry norm

  • A part of PR & comms: companies communicating advocacy messages to influence other companies’ policies

• Advocacy to one’s own company:

  • Company internal coalition-building

Policy implementation:

• Implementing government policy:

  • Setting policies

    • Policymaking & lawmaking

    • Making regulations and executive guidance

    • A part of standards-setting: setting standards

  • Enforcement & verification (by governments)

• Implementing corporate policy

  • Executing policies

    • Corporate compliance

    • A part of industry norm building: building an industry norm by example

    • A part of corporate governance: implementing high-level corporate policies

    • A part of PR & comms: companies implementing PR & comms policies (may include some advocacy)

    • AI development management

  • Quality assurance & related (analogous to government enforcement & verification)

[Mau]

From this angle, a few activities seem like potential additions:

• Coalition-building in the context of government policy

• Government execution of policy other than by enforcement (e.g., by funding research, hiring, acquiring technology, or using technology)

• PR & Comms activities by government policy actors

• Setting of corporate policy (after policy development and advocacy, before policy execution and enforcement)

• Advocacy by non-corporate actors (e.g., Congress members) to influence corporate policy

[hanadulset]

Thanks for this! Added them as examples of actions. Could you explain how “setting of corporate policy” is different from corporate compliance & corporate governance? I also didn’t add the last one because it seems quite rare that policymakers would do advocacy towards corporate actors for these corporate actors to change their policy, while I believe all other activities are fairly common.

[Mau]

Thanks!

Re: setting of corporate policy, yeah, on second thought I’m less confident it’s a very useful category. The differences I had in mind were:

• Corporate compliance seems to be narrower in its goals

• Corporate compliance and corporate governance seem to be broader activities involving the selection and implementation of policy (?), while setting it could be the the part where the new policy is formally established (analogous to “lawmaking” and “making regulations,” which also seem like fairly narrow parts of broader processes).

it seems quite rare that policymakers would do advocacy towards corporate actors for these corporate actors to change their policy

Hm, maybe. My impression is that (at least in a US context and for high-profile cases) it’s not so rare, since Congress members occasionally directly contact businesses or pressure them (via implicit threats of harsh legislation), by, e.g., grilling them in Congressional hearings. And advocacy from non-governmental third parties (e.g., corporate campaigns from animal advocacy organizations) might not be all that rare? But I agree it’s less common than the other, standard activities.

[hanadulset]

Thanks—I see what you mean re advocacy towards corporate actors—that would make it one of the actions in industry norms building. However, I originally had congressional grillings in mind as part of the law-making process: it serves both as expressing discontent vis-a-vis companies’ behavior, but also as a way to inform/​signal for policymakers among themselves on the need for better policy/​enforcement of the policy and on the prioritization of this issue (high enough on the agenda to make a public fuss about it).