The whole and its parts

The whole & its parts

Regulating innovations

Over the years, Sundar Pichai has often called for regulations on the products Google and other tech companies develop. And he now has come back to this topic as a reaction to the growing speed with which AI is being shared with the market and made accessible to the public.

It might sound strange that a company seeks to be regulated.

But rules are the fabric of society. They help people know how to act in any type of group. They help people understand within which framework they can proceed. They allow us to transcend not only one organization or one nation, but they can also become applicable on a worldwide level. They describe what the people who are within the space of application of these rules can expect to happen and are invited to do.

Rules and regulations are a helper in limiting the dynamic an organization is subject to.

Organizations follow the rules of the market. But its rules are rarely stable enough to uphold the ethics and values promoted by society. That is why legislation exists.

What Sundar Pichai is asking for, is what his organization cannot achieve on its own.

Like all other organizations, Google is subject to the tension between ethics and market dynamic. It’s a tension they may not fully give in to but may lose out of sight if the market becomes the one writing society’s rules.

 

 

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