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The Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Explaining the Emerging Regulatory Policy in the EU

European Union
Governance
Policy Analysis
Ronit Justo-Hanani
Tel Aviv University
Ronit Justo-Hanani
Tel Aviv University
Stefan Wurster
Technische Universität München – TUM School of Governance

Abstract

‘Some say China has all the data and the US has all the money. But in Europe, we have purpose’ (Margrethe Vestager, EU’s competition commissioner) This paper explores political drivers and policy processes of the emerging EU’s regulatory policy for Artificial Intelligence (AI) risks. Since 2016 the EU has been developing a regulatory policy to tighten control and to ensure human-centric, ethical and responsible use of AI. This regulatory evolution is of theoretical interest as well as of public governance relevance, addressing the links between risk governance and technological innovation policy in Europe. Although AI is among the largest EUregulated industries and a policy domain in which EU regulatory activities continue to grow, political perspective (actors, institutions and processes) remain underexplored. The aim of this paper is to address the question: what accounts for the evolution of the EU regulatory policy on AI? the paper thus paves the way for developing grounded analytical accounts of this newly-created governance domain. It explores the emergent policy at the EU-level from three theoretical perspectives and a set of derived testable hypotheses concerning the co-evolution of global economic competition, EU actors’ preferences and institutional structure. I argue that all three are key drivers shaping the technology regulation policy and each explains some aspect of the policy process: motivation, agenda-setting and decision-making.