Industry actors in the United States have gained extensive influence in conversations about the regulation of general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Although industry participation is an important part of the policy process, it can also cause regulatory capture, whereby industry co-opts regulatory regimes to prioritize private over public welfare. Capture of AI policy by AI developers and deployers could hinder such regulatory goals as ensuring the safety, fairness, beneficence, transparency, or innovation of general-purpose AI systems. In this paper, we first introduce different models of regulatory capture from the social science literature. We then present results from interviews with 17 AI policy experts on what policy outcomes could compose regulatory capture in US AI policy, which AI industry actors are influencing the policy process, and whether and how AI industry actors attempt to achieve outcomes of regulatory capture. Experts were primarily concerned with capture leading to a lack of AI regulation, weak regulation, or regulation that over-emphasizes certain policy goals over others. Experts most commonly identified agenda-setting (15 of 17 interviews), advocacy (13), academic capture (10), information management (9), cultural capture through status (7), and media capture (7) as channels for industry influence. To mitigate these particular forms of industry influence, we recommend systemic changes in developing technical expertise in government and civil society, independent funding streams for the AI ecosystem, increased transparency and ethics requirements, greater civil society access to policy, and various procedural safeguards.

翻译：在美国，产业界参与者已在通用人工智能系统的监管讨论中获得了广泛影响力。尽管产业参与是政策制定过程的重要组成部分，但其也可能引发监管俘获现象，即产业界通过操控监管体系将私人利益置于公共福利之上。人工智能开发者与部署者对AI政策的俘获，可能阻碍确保通用人工智能系统安全性、公平性、有益性、透明度或创新性等监管目标的实现。本文首先梳理社会科学文献中不同的监管俘获理论模型，继而通过对17位人工智能政策专家的访谈，探究美国AI政策中可能构成监管俘获的政策结果、影响政策进程的AI产业参与者，以及产业界是否及如何试图实现监管俘获。专家们主要担忧俘获将导致AI监管缺失、监管薄弱或监管过度侧重某些政策目标。专家最常指出的产业影响渠道包括：议程设置（17次访谈中提及15次）、政策倡导（13次）、学术俘获（10次）、信息管控（9次）、通过地位实现的文化俘获（7次）及媒体俘获（7次）。为缓解这些特定形式的产业影响，我们建议在政府与公民社会中系统性培育技术专长、建立AI生态系统的独立资金渠道、强化透明度与伦理要求、扩大公民社会政策参与途径，并实施多种程序性保障措施。