Amidst uncertainty over AI’s role in society, two WashU professors discussed the necessity of regulations on government use of artificial intelligence (AI) and protecting Americans’ privacy. 

The event on Wednesday, hosted by the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement and co-sponsored by the Cordell Institute, brought together WashU School of Law professor Neil Richards and WashU political science professor Ted Enamorado.

Richards spoke about the threat to human creativity with continued AI use. 

“I worry what the future of work looks like if we continue to embrace these technologies in ways that are going to not just replace humans, but … supplant humans and take away the meaningful value of work and a human-centered society,” Richards said. “I think we can use these tools to make our societies better, absolutely. But I think a future of work in which we are reduced to being prompt engineers and slop babysitters is not a very appealing future at all.”

With the advent of AI technology being used for surveillance, Richards shared his concerns about government departments like the National Security Agency (NSA) infringing on privacy rights with Flock cameras and AI surveillance of phones. 

“Let’s imagine the police can listen to your phone calls, and there’s a procedure that they can use involving a warrant where they can get that,” Richards said. “There’s only so many people that work for the NSA. There’s a lot, but they are finite. But you can use automated AI agents to listen to everybody’s phone call or process everyone’s contacts and run algorithms.”

Richards says he feared that these technologies are being celebrated rather than regulated.

“I worry that we don’t have the framework for these tools, and all of these tools just sort of get lumped in under a rhetoric of innovation and AI and progress,” Richards said. 

Enamorado wants a future where AI functions as a way to increase civic participation and accessibility. In his research, he focuses on probabilistic record linkage and improving probabilistic methods. He is currently in the process of imagining an AI chatbot that can serve as an assistant to people and help them fill out forms. He said he believes that AI can be used as a way to “democratize” access to legal documents.

In a post-event interview, Enamorado acknowledged the difference in opinions between Richards and himself. Richards focuses on long-term, higher-up regulation, while Enamorado notes that these regulations could take time and that, for the time being, education and beneficial AI use is his highest priority. 

The Gephardt Institute’s Civic Café series, hosted weekly on Wednesday nights, seeks to bring in community and WashU experts to promote discussion of current events. This event was particularly well attended by WashU Law and undergraduate students, with a few members of the greater St. Louis community in the crowd. 

Some students attending the event said the discussion broadened their views of AI regulation’s importance at the international level and AI’s integration with society. Sophomore Alden St. John reflected on the need for moderate regulation without restricting development.

“Overregulating could be an overcorrection and inhibit our technological development,” he said. “Technological and economic leaders across nations need to come together to have ground rules that protect humanity without inhibiting the kind of good technological innovation [the speakers] were talking about.” 

Sophomore Ava Ayad also commented on the abundance of AI in our current society. 

“[The event] sort of opened my eyes to the fact that you can’t just turn a blind eye to AI anymore. It is such a big part of society whether you like it or not,” Ayad said.

When discussing what regulatory actions need to be taken, Richards spoke to the need for regulation at the federal level. Due to the inconsistency of state level politics, he stated that these regulations needed to be nationalized.

“I think ultimately, as people in a free society, if we have rights that are guaranteed by the law, and we cannot sue to enforce those rights, [and they’re] contingent only on whether the attorney general of our state happens to like those rights or not, they’re not really rights at all,” Richards said.

Through his work, Enamorado explores the role of education in AI’s future, believing that through schooling we can become better participants in society. He said that regulation is important, but so is using available tools to generate progress in society.

“I’m still a big believer that education can help. If we’re a better educated society, we’re gonna be better citizens, and that’s a big part of the mission of this university,” Enamorado said. “And as such, we’re going to be better users of these technologies, but we need the safeguards, and the safeguards are going to be regulation that allows for progress in these dimensions.”