Regulating AI may be a prevalent topic at the highest levels of government and tech, but the moment to get it right may have already passed.
“Regulation is going to have to be self-regulation,” said Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital, this week at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh. “The cat is out of the bag. We’ve missed the Oppenheimer moment. Many people compare it to the control of nuclear weapons.”
Sorrell—famed as the founder of advertising giant WPP—went on to explain that tech companies and individual figures like Elon Musk are simply too rich and influential for governments to meaningfully bring down a regulatory hammer.
Looking ahead, Sorrell also foresees that, especially in advertising, we’re soon set to see audiences lean into and accept “the use of synthetic people … imaginary people in advertising.”
“Our view is that over the next two to three years that will become commonplace,” he said. “The reason is economics. We’re talking about a huge disruption. You’re talking about reductions of as much as 80% to 90% of production costs, out the window, and taking create costs down—whilst media costs and creating more money for media investment will become more and more important.”
