technologies, while also looking to devise sensible solutions to complex challenges,
policymakers should consider a more flexible, bottom-up, permissionless innovation
approach as the basis of America's policy regime for AI technologies.
1. Ed Felten, “How to Prepare for the Future of Artificial Intelligence,” White House blog,
June 27, 2016
2. Adam Thierer, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive
Technological Freedom (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2016).
3. Adam Thierer, "Embracing a Culture of Permissionless Innovation," Cato Online Forum,
November 2014.
4. Adam Thierer, Permissionless Innovation.
5. Subjects include the Internet of Things, wearable devices, smart cars, commercial drones,
cryptocurrency, 3D printing, robotics, the sharing economy, and advanced medical devices.
Our research can be accessed at permissionlessinnovation.org.
6. Adam Thierer and Michael Wilt, "Permissionless Innovation: A 10-Point Checklist for
Public Policymakers," Economic Perspectives, Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
March 31, 2016.
7. Nicholas Chen et al., "Global Economic Impacts Associated with Artificial Intelligence"
(Study, Analysis Group, Boston, MA, February 25, 2016), "Growth in Al producing sectors
could lead to increased revenues, and employment within these existing firms, as well as the
potential creation of entirely new economic activity. Productivity improve¬ments in
existing sectors could be realized through faster and more efficient processes and decision
making as well as increased knowledge and access to information."
8. Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2014); Jerry Kaplan, Hu¬ mans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of
Artificial Intelligence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 7. (Kaplan suggests that
Al systems "can wreak havoc on an unimaginable scale in the blink of an eye.")
9. Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and
Information (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
10. John Frank Weaver. "We Need to Pass Legislation on Artificial Intelligence Early and
Often," Slate, September 12, 2014.
11. Alex Rosenblat, Tamara Kneese and danah boyd, "Understanding Intelligent Systems"
(Data & Society Working Paper. Data & Society Research Institute, October 8, 2014), 11.
12. Matthew U. Scherer, "Regulating Artificial Intelligence Systems: Risks, Challenges,
Competencies, and Strategies," Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 29, no. 2 (2016): 43-
45. Also see Weaver, "We Need to Pass Legislation."
13. Matthew U. Scherer, "Regulating Artificial Intelligence Systems," 45-47.
14. Ryan Calo. "The Case for a Federal Robotics Commission" (Report, Brookings Institution,
Washington, DC, September 2014).
15. Andrew Tutt, "An FDA for Algorithms" (working paper, 2016), available through SSRN at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2747994.
16. Scherer, "Regulating Artificial Intelligence Systems," 43
17. Thierer, Permissionless Innovation, 82. ("Trying to preemptively plan for every