What makes this particularly frustrating is that we know what effective tech regulation looks like. Europe has been doing it with GDPR, the Digital Markets Act, and now the AI Act. These regulations have actual compliance requirements, meaningful penalties, and have changed how tech companies operate in EU markets. The US could learn from that approach. Instead, we get frameworks and principles and guidelines – bureaucratic documents that let politicians claim they're addressing the issue without actually constraining what companies can do.

There are legitimate challenges to AI regulation. The technology moves fast, the risks aren't always clear until deployment, and overly restrictive rules could hamper beneficial innovation. But those challenges don't justify the alternative of effectively no regulation. They justify better regulation – adaptive frameworks with real enforcement power and technical expertise to implement them.

My concern is that this framework becomes another example of regulatory capture. Tech companies get to help write the rules, ensure those rules are toothless, and then trumpet their compliance with voluntary guidelines while doing whatever maximizes profit. We've seen this movie before with social media content moderation, data privacy, and algorithmic discrimination. Every time, the industry promises to self-regulate, establishes impressive-sounding principles, and then ignores them when convenient.

The White House AI framework might be a useful starting point. But without statutory backing, enforcement mechanisms, and consequences for non-compliance, it's just another document that tech companies will reference in congressional testimony while continuing business as usual. The technology is impressive. The question is whether government regulation can actually have teeth – or if we're watching another round of regulatory theater while the industry does whatever it wants.

I hope I'm wrong about this. But I've watched tech policy for long enough to be deeply skeptical of anything that relies on voluntary compliance from companies with infinite resources and business models built on doing exactly what these frameworks claim to prevent.

3 days ago