Wired Hosts Inaugural Summit on the Future of AI Policy

Wired Hosts Inaugural Summit on the Future of AI Policy

Watch the livestream hereand find images from the event here.

Yesterday, at the Condé Nast offices in New York City, WIRED convened leaders across technology, policy, and media to discuss how emerging regulations will define the trajectory of innovation and shape public policy in the next chapter of AI.

Media leaders, including Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, People Inc. CEO Niel Vogel, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff, and Gannett CEO Mike Reed, discussed the need for stronger legislation and protective measures to ensure media companies are fairly compensated by tech platforms for the use of their IP, while leaders from Google, Runway, and Salesforce argued that the technology will be a boon for economic growth and would not be deployed unchecked.

Highlights from the day include:

During a conversation with WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond, Senator Richard Blumenthal, said policymakers should learn from social media and figure out suitable guardrails around copyright infringement and other key issues before AI causes too much damage, telling WIRED, "We want to deal with the perfect storm that is engulfing journalism."

Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and one of the authors of the Trump Administration's AI Action Plan, defended that policy blueprint's vision for AI regulation. He claimed that it introduced more rules around AI risks than any other government has produced. Responding to some of the criticism of the White House's AI Action plan, Ball said, "Truthfully, I was wondering could ChatGPT do a better job of critiquing the action plan, and I think probably the answer is yes. Partially because I suspect ChatGPT would have actually read it."

While addressing concerns regarding Google's role in undermining the media industry, Markham C. Erickson, vice president of government affairs and public policy, told WIRED editor at large Steven Levy, "We want a healthy ecosystem, but user preferences, and what users want is also changing."

In response to Erickson's comments, Mike Reed, CEO of Gannett, said, "The insinuation that AI Overview is not getting in the way of the 10 blue links and the traffic going back to creators and publishers is just 100 percent false. All of the information is out there about how reduced the flow of people is back to sites.