AI Governance and Open Models: Who Controls the Pace of Innovation?

R Street Institute Resident Senior Fellow Adam Thierer joined AEI’s Shane Tews and Georgia Tech professor Milton Mueller for a discussion on the future of artificial intelligence governance, open models and the role government should play in determining the pace of AI innovation.

As employees at several leading AI companies call for greater government and international oversight of frontier AI models, policymakers face a difficult question: Who should decide when a new model is safe enough to reach the market?

The conversation explores the tension between calls to slow frontier AI development and concerns that excessive prerelease regulation could weaken U.S. competitiveness, particularly as the United States races to maintain its technological advantage over China.

Thierer, Mueller and Tews also examine whether existing laws, liability regimes and other traditional policy tools can address AI-related harms without giving governments broad authority over which models can be released. They consider the challenges of international AI governance, the importance of open models and whether centralized oversight can realistically keep pace with a technology spreading across nearly every part of the digital economy.

Read the episode transcript here.