Vallance review advocates light-touch regulation for emerging technologies | Computer Weekly
Summary
This is billed as a “live testing environment, with a well-defined relaxation of rules, to allow innovators and entrepreneurs to experiment with new products or services under enhanced regulatory supervision without the risk of fines or liability”. For its part, the ICO issued a statement with respect to the government’s response to the Vallance report: “Given the opportunities that AI offers, we know we have a crucial role to play in helping innovators develop safe and trustworthy new products and services. The report’s second recommendation – “government should announce a clear policy position on the relationship between intellectual property law and generative AI to provide confidence to innovators and investors” – has elicited a move for the Intellectual Property Office to “produce a code of practice by the summer which will provide guidance to support AI firms to access copyrighted work as an input to their models, whilst ensuring there are protections (e.g. labelling) on generated output to support right holders of copyrighted work”. With respect to the latter, the government said it intends to propose a “variable limit approach at the end of March, ahead of a formal consultation on this and other liability and insurance matters in June”. The report’s recommendation on cyber security – “amending the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to include a statutory public interest defence that would provide stronger legal protections for cyber security researchers and professionals, and would have a catalytic effect on innovation in a sector with considerable growth potential” – the government said only that the “Home Office have a consultation live and a programme of work in the pipeline”.