Don’t Race to Regulate: The Technologies That Could Be Lost in Overly Broad Regulation
Running ten miles is no small feat. Doing it while blind seems unimaginable. For Lafayette, Louisiana’s Shawntina Gibson, a blind veteran of both the United States Navy and National Guard, it was a challenge worth conquering. A participant in Meta’s initiative to provide blind veterans with smart glasses, Gibson completed the Army ten-miler with AI-powered glasses as her guide.
Gibson’s success in completing the race is notable but not singular. Thomas Panek, also blind and the CEO of Lighthouse Guild, the nonprofit with which Meta partners to distribute glasses to the blind, completed the NYC half marathon. Reporting on the event, Runner’s Worlddescribed an unexpected way the glasses changed Pank’s experience on race day: “turning his head and using the glasses to describe what was happening on the sidelines—shirts, logos, the cluster of ‘his people.’…With the glasses, the world around him became readable in an emotional way for him that it hadn’t been before.”
Explaining how the technology behind their glasses empowers blind and low-vision people towards greater independence, Meta names detailed descriptions of one’s environment, hands free messaging, and the option for live AI-powered conversation to ask questions. These features function far beyond race day and can expand opportunities for participation in everyday life.
The promise of AI for people with disabilities or health problems is often one of increased independence, connection, and peace of mind. Recent innovations include a brain-computer interface system that helps people with ALS-induced paralysis communicate. The system goes so far as to recreate the individual’s voice and produce speech (intonation included) based on brain signals and attempted speech. In Louisiana, a collection of efforts are underway to leverage AI devices and systems to address some of the state’s most pressing health challenges. This initiative includes AI-powered detection of undiagnosed heart-valve disease to wearable technology developed to prevent occupational injuries in high-stakes environments, like petrochemical facilities, military operations, and athletics.
Despite their benefits, these technologies can often get swept up in overly broad or preemptive regulation that was instituted to address very different risks. In their brief on this phenomenon, the Abundance Institute offered an example to illustrate the friction between the reality of health wearables and the state laws they can fall under. “For example, if a smart ring analyzes sleep data and suggests a user ‘take a walk to reduce stress,’ regulators could classify this as a healthcare decision. Proving such a simple wellness algorithm is bias-free via formal assessment will impose compliance costs, which could be prohibitive for small firms and raise the cost of products from larger firms.” Regulatory efforts can fail to distinguish between a personal wearable device that collects data to help the user in real time and something like a tool of mass surveillance.
States have a role to play in protecting the right of people like Shawntina Gibson to leverage innovation that makes ten miles, and their lives, better. By avoiding blanket regulatory approaches and favoring existing law, and targeted guidelines that address harms when they occur instead of in anticipation of their occurrence, lawmakers can ensure that the regulations of their state don’t become another obstacle in the life of someone with health challenges.
