Who are the policymakers who are shaping our national and global response to the development of AI?
There are many of them. Sometimes call them “lawmakers” or “market regulators” or “policymakers” and they are essentially bodies that make decisions. Those decisions either turn into rules that are legally binding - that will be the case for legislation - or they create a standard in the market that will force you to behave in a certain way.
Those often show up as guidelines or industry standards across the sector. There are a lot of these in environmental activities and sectors and the same applies in the creative industries.
There are different types of policy makers or lawmakers, so let’s focus on the UK.
The first type of policy makers or lawmakers, and the one that probably comes to mind first for most people, is the Government. That includes ministers and Parliament. They create rules called legislation, also known as statutes, or regulations. There are slight differences, but they are essentially in the same category.
The government can delegate rule-making powers to other bodies that they think will be better suited to make regulations on specific areas. Ofcom, the UK communications regulator is a well-known example of this type of body in the creative industries. The UK Intellectual Property Office is another. They are all attached to the government, but they have a little bit of independence and often they will issue specific regulations for a sector and enforce it.
The UK, is a common law jurisdiction or common law country, which means that judges can create rules, because if they are presented with a dispute between two parties for which there is no pre-existing legislation or no useful precedent, but there is a previous judicial case that would apply in that particular instance again, they can come up with a rule in order to settle the dispute. That is what we call “judge-made law”. It's quite rare these days because it means that you have no pre-existing cases and no legislation and we have hundreds of years’ worth of regulation. So finding yourself in that position as a party is quite rare, but it is possible.
If a country is part of an organization like the EU, then that is another layer of policy-making and law-making bodies. You have the European Parliament and the European Commission.
The UK left the EU, so that is no longer the case. But, for example, it is still part of the European Convention on Human Rights. That convention, which is an international treaty, comes with its own court. That court can make decisions, or rulings, that will be binding on the UK.
And last but not least, you have what we call “soft” lawmakers or “soft” policymakers. They are often private organizations that are representing stakeholders or a group of interests and that have enough authority to set policy or to set guidance which other people and other companies in that sector will end up following, either because it becomes the trend because it's good for business or because it helps to have a harmonized rule book for a particular sector. Unions can be in this category. Unions can be those representative organisations that, with the power of the numbers that they represent, can define the terms under which their members will work. They have to respect the Law in doing so, because they cannot behave like or function as a cartel. They have to respect, for example, laws pertaining to Fair Competition.
But when a representative organisation like a union or another organisation with a lot of clout or well regarded reputation takes a position as standard statement, sometimes that is taken as policy because of the influence it wields.
In short, there exists a range of people who make decisions that will impact you as an individual, as a performer, as a person in your professional and personal life.