Governing AI: Beyond the Hype and Doom

Professor Onur Bakiner at ECE Spring 2025 Colloquium

This talk is about efforts to get AI right. Building upon AI scholarship in science and technology studies, technology law, business ethics, and computer science, I list proposed solutions to AI-related problems around the world. I present theoretical debates and empirical evidence for how and how well technical solutions, business self-regulation, and legal regulation, which stand out as three toolkits to govern AI, work. This idealized governance model will not work seamlessly, however. Each component of this governance scheme has weaknesses – some more than others. Getting AI governance right cannot be disentangled from local and global struggles for justice and equality. The people who are negatively affected by those decisions are denied a seat at the table. It is true that AI creates new problems and amplifies existing ones, but deep down, where AI fails is where human societies fail. The long-term health of the relationship between technology and society depends on whether ordinary people are empowered to participate in making informed decisions to govern the future of technology – AI included. To put simply, the problem is disempowerment and alienation, and the solution is people’s informed participation.