When it comes to AI, the US innovates while we regulate

Britain is a nation with a sense of malaise: post-Covid, post-Brexit, post-Post Office. There’s a feeling we can’t get much right. Politicians of all shades agree the country needs to get its economic and cultural mojo back.

Rightly, they propose boosting certain feelgood sectors — green energy and biotech, say — as a way out of the malaise, offering helpful regulation and subsidies. But when it comes to what will perhaps be the biggest economic opportunity since the Internet — AI, and particularly generative AI like ChatGPT — they focus too much on the harms, and too little on the opportunities.

Innovations that should give rise to wonder instead spur talk of danger, fear and an urgent need to curb its use and punish the