
We are eager to release the Vidhitsa Law Institute's first technical report, on artificial intelligence hype and its legal-economic risks.
Bhavana J Sekhar, Principal Researcher and Poulomi Chatterjee, Contributing Researcher have co-authored this report with me. In this work, we have addressed the issue of hype cycles caused by artificial intelligence technologies in detail.
This report is an initial research contribution developed by the team of Vidhitsa Law Institute of Global and Technology Affairs (VLiGTA) as a part of the efforts in the Artificial Intelligence Resilience department. We have continued our work which we had started in the Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence and Law (ISAIL) since 2021, on formalising ethics research on the trend of Artificial Intelligence hype. In my discussions and consultations with Dr Jeffrey Funk, a former Faculty at the National University of Singapore, Bogdan Grigorescu, a tech industry expert and an ISAIL Alumnus and Dr Richard Self from the University of Derby, I realised that it is necessary to cater to encapsulate the scope and extent of Artificial Intelligence hype beyond competition policy and data privacy issues, which many developed countries in the D9 group of countries have already faced. Many technology companies inflate their valuations and use Artificial Intelligence to hype their products and services’ value. This however can be done by influencing stocks, distorting perceptions, misdirecting demand and credibility concerns and other methods as well. The key to the exploitative nature of AI hype as we know them is based on the interconnectedness of the information and digital economy and how minuscule economic and ethical innovations in AI as a technology, can be abused.
Bhavana’s Market Analysis is succinct and focuses on the points of convergence and Poulomi’s evaluation of the ethics of Artificial Intelligence is appreciated. I express my special regards to Sanad Arora from the Vidhitsa Law Institute and Ayush Kumar Rathore from Indic Pacific’s Technology Team for their moral support.
Some of the key aspects discussed in report are about the perpetuation of the hype cycles and their formalisation in the legal rubric for regulators. We have also focused with a soft law perception to address larger economic and technical issues and offered recommendations. Based on our research, we have formulated seven working conditions to determine artificial intelligence hype, which are based on a set of stages:
Stage 1: Influence or Generation Determination
An Artificial Intelligence hype cycle is perpetuated to influence or generate market perception in a real-time scenario such that a class of Artificial Intelligence technology as a product / service is used in a participatory or preparatory sense to influence or generate the hype cycle.
Stage 2: Influencing or Generating Market Perceptions & Conditions