Influencing the Meteoric Rise of AI: Centering Ethics, Law, and Society in Urgent Policy Reform

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a transformative technological advancement with the potential to yield extraordinary societal benefits while simultaneously introducing significant potential harms to individuals, governments, and society. The adoption of AI has outpaced the ability of society to collectively and cohesively respond through the implementation of adequate regulatory guardrails. While AI presents novel benefits and challenges, the broader dynamic of responding to new, uncharted technologies has historical precedence. The article's methodological approach employed empirical research using law articles and policies. As such, the article explores the benefits, challenges, and actual or potential harms in three business sectors: business and finance, human resources, and entertainment and copyright. The authors also examine how the U.S. and international jurisdictions have approached AI and conduct an overview of how the large scientific and technological innovation, the Human Genome Project, considered the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of innovation. Lastly, this article provides recommendations for policy and legal protections that are focused not on government oversight but rather requiring the AI innovators, developers, and business users to analyze the ethical, legal, and social implications themselves and make those analyses available to the public, with potential civil and criminal penalties for ELSI breaches.