Can laws accelerate innovation in the system?
Posted on December 21, 2017Innovation is indispensable in solving social problems. “Thinking in System”, written by Donella H. Meadows[1], introduces the concept of “self-organization” as a power to create new things from the system. “Thinking in System” explains that “self-organization is the ability of a single fertilized ovum to generate, out of itself, the incredible complexity of a mature frog, or chicken, or person. It is the ability of nature to have diversified millions of fantastic species out of a puddle of organic chemicals. It is the ability of a society to take the ideas of burning coal, making steam, pumping water, and specializing labor, and develop them eventually into an automobile assembly plant, a city of skyscrapers, a worldwide network of communications.” On the other hand, “self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers. in the name of law and order, self-organization can be suppressed for long, barren, cruel, boring periods.”
However, does the law always prevent self-organization? Can laws support self-organization and contribute to the induction of innovation? I demonstrate that the laws are necessary for innovation and further explain what laws can do to advance AI and biotechnology innovation as an example.
Importance of Laws for innovation
Many people recognize that laws and contracts regulate our freedom and impede creativity and innovation. When new businesses using new technologies are developed, it is often said that it is difficult to utilize them because of regulations. Indeed, law is one of the factors regulating the behavior of individuals and companies. It can not be denied that regulation is an important role of the law. When new technologies are born and new businesses using that technology appear and spread, eventually debate on the legal development will begin, and laws will be enacted. Because of this process, pertinent laws usually come after new technologies. This phenomenon is called “law lag,” and as the information society progresses rapidly, law lag is occurring in many fields.
On the other hand, in the information society, contracts between people are becoming massive and complicated. People are never conscious how many times contracts are done a day. For example, I agree to the terms of use and sign contracts when riding on a train, buying things in supermarkets, and using web services like YouTube and Facebook. With the spread of the Internet, contracts are more familiar to us than ever.
Meanwhile, US companies like Google, Uber and Airbnb are producing many innovations that have legal challenges. For example, Google Street View has problems of personality rights, and privacy rights infringement on the streets and indoors. In addition, Uber and Airbnb have challenged the legal entry barrier of the taxi and the hotel industries. Although these companies have legal issues, they will not stop services or business. On the presupposition that legal interpretation or the law itself can change with the times, they make legal logic to justify their business, acquire market share, and realize legal revision by lobbying the government. Furthermore, in recent years, legal development has promoted creativity and innovation. Software like Linux, information content such as Wikipedia and Hatsune Miku, and hardware such as Arduino are examples. A variety of open source licenses such as General Public License, MIT license, and Creative Commons license, and strategic design of the terms of use as a contract of the Internet era are factors of success. Also, with the aim of expanding innovation and market size, large companies such as Tesla Motors and Toyota Motors have strategically opened patents. For this reason, the laws and contracts should not be a simple obstacle to business, creativity and innovation, but on the contrary, I think that the laws and contracts should be designed well in order to promote or accelerate creativity and innovation.
When a new technology is born, institutional design including regulation will be discussed. Nowadays, restrictions on 3D printers, drones, Bitcoin are debated, and from now on, new technologies in AI, biotechnology, robots, block chains, and space will be noticed. 3D printers and drones may threaten safety and Bitcoin may threaten the credibility of national currencies, but inappropriate regulation will hamper creativity and innovation. On the other hand, when the new technology is born into society, the idea that it is better not to regulate is also wrong. When governments determine the rules, companies are likely to enter new markets without becoming atrophied, and to activate businesses. For example, in Japan, the aviation law was revised to regulate drones in 2015, and the drone business became active. In addition, the government is beginning to clarify regulations so that companies can utilize FinTech. Sheila Jasanoff, who is a jurist in the U.S., argues that appropriate regulation sometimes leads society[2]. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to predict what kind of regulation is appropriate regulation. When the future use of a technology can not be predicted, leaving the technology uncontrolled is desirable as an aid to innovation. The internet we are currently using has been designed based on this idea. It is difficult to properly balance the value of safety / reliability and the value of creativity / innovation, but what we have to strongly recognize is that the appropriate balance in the system will shift with changes in the times. I do not want to insist that the value of innovation should be given priority in every situation. In a society of great change, I would like to claim that it is important to update laws and institutions in accordance with the progress of technology and the changing times.
Laws focusing on AI development
Currently, AI is outstandingly used in the field of art. For example, AI created a painting that imitated Rembrandt(Figure 1)[3]. However, it is unclear whether the copyright will be generated in the creation produced autonomously by AI. According to Japanese law, a creation autonomously generated only by artificial intelligence is not protected by copyright, patent right and design right. However, it is difficult to discriminate the difference between the one generated by humans and the one generated by AI, and it is difficult to argue that the artifacts created by artificial intelligence shouldn’t be legally protected.
(Figure 1) AI created a painting that imitated Rembrandt
We need to lead the discussion in the government on revising copyright laws related to AI’s production. For the products created by AI, it is necessary to discuss whether we do not approve the copyright or approve “weak copyright” that shorten the protection period. Moreover, a large amount of data necessary for deep learning is very important to create superior AI. I think that protection of this data’s intellectual property is particularly important. For example, Google has made public the program code of AI because it knows that the most valuable thing for developing AI is not code, but the data that is necessary for AI learning. Google is holding huge data that is not disclosed, so it may recognize data as the most important intellectual property. In addition, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Apple established “Partnership on AI” for standardization and openness of AI. It is important not only to develop domestic laws like the Copyright Law, but also to advance such international rule making.
Furthermore, it is also important to support the lives of people who have been deprived of their work by AI. Actually, the White House warns that millions of jobs could be automated out of existence in coming years. The report by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, forecasts massive jobs losses due to automation and AI[4]. A paper published in 2013 by Oxford University researchers[5], for example, estimated that as many as 47 percent of all jobs could eventually be automated. The report, likewise, forecasts millions of job losses in careers such as truck driving, as self-driving vehicles hit the roads, as well as low-skilled jobs. Therefore, in the future, we need to make legal systems corresponding to AI and introduce basic income.
Several cities have already begun experiments of basic income. For example in 2016, Y Combinator, the famed Silicon Valley incubator had selected Oakland to be the home of its new “Basic Income” pilot project. The idea is pretty simple. Give some people a small amount of money per month, no strings attached, for a year, and see what happens. With any luck, people will use it to lift themselves out of poverty. In this case, Y Combinator spends about $1.5 million over the course of a year to study the distribution of “$1,500 or $2,000” per month to “30 to 50” people. There will also be a similar-sized control group that gets nothing. That way we can see what differences there are in the responses of the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, skilled and unskilled laborers, and so on[6]. And we can tweak future studies or the final public policy in light of that information.
Laws focusing on biotechnology development
The treaty regulating the recombination of the gene called the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and domestic law based on the treaty, have been enacted, but there is not sufficient legislation about biotechnology established. However, it is expected that numerous technologies and businesses using genome information will be developed in the future. Furthermore, with the spread of technologies that can be handled easily like 3D printers, many people will utilize biotechnology, but biotechnology always needs to consider ethical issues. For example, a project that creates foods preferred by humans is underway. With this project, genetic manipulation can accurately realize virus-resistant ingredients, allergy-free ingredients and new ingredients that look like beef. By manipulating the snake genes and culturing the cells, it is possible to generate new ingredients that are similar to beef. However, humans are instinctively wary to modify genes. On the other hand, the technology of agricultural product hybridization has produced favorable genes, so it is difficult to judge the difference between genetic manipulation and agricultural products reproducing.
In this way, due to the evolution of biotechnology, “nature” such as microorganisms, animals and plants, and “environment” such as products, buildings, cities, etc. are subject to design. As a result, people will gain great potential and also face new challenges. The impact of genetic manipulation can spread to the entire food chain. Should we do it or should we not do it? Who decides? More than ever, it is necessary to conduct discussions that cross the field of expertise and to carry out new laws.
For example, I think that we should revise the Personal Information Protection Law. Currently, there are no clear rules on how to use the human genome information in business, so it is difficult for companies to enter the bio industry in fear of violating the existing laws. We need to promote the entry and the investment of enterprises by establishing rules that balance the interests of personal privacy protection and corporate use.
Designing Laws on various fields
When we look at the world as a system, we found that every factor has mutual influences. Therefore, we need to design laws in the future so as to grasp various fields as a system and to create a world where people, society and the global environment are in harmony.
– N H
References
[1] Donella H. Meadows(2008), “Thinking in Systems”
[2] Sheila Jasanoff(1995), “Science at the Bar”
[3] Emily Reynolds(2016), “This fake Rembrandt was created by an algorithm“, WIRED.co.uk http://www.wired.co.uk/article/new-rembrandt-painting-computer-3d-printed
[4] Executive Office of the President (2016), “Artificial Intelligence Automation, and the Economy”, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF
[5] Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne (2013), “THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT: HOW SUSCEPTIBLE ARE JOBS TO COMPUTERISATION?”, https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
[6] Cyrus Farivar, “To mitigate poverty, Y Combinator set to launch minimum income plan”, ars technical, June 25, 2016, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/can-high-profile-bay-area-tech-incubators-basic-income-plan-work/