Governing the AI Frontier: Can We Regulate Innovation Without Killing It?
At the International Center for Law & Economics’ March 13 conference in Rome—“Substance over Slogans: Competition and the Wealth of Nations”—the fifth panel, “Governing the AI Frontier: Can We Regulate Innovation Without Killing It?” featured Thibault Schrepel, Lauren Wagner, Andrei Hagiu, Herbert Hovenkamp, and Elena Yndurain. The discussion centered on a basic problem: policymakers must govern AI before markets and capabilities fully take shape, with limited ability to measure progress or predict competitive outcomes.
Panelists then explored whether AI raises new competition issues or repackages familiar ones, and how regulation should respond. They weighed the risks of premature, overlapping rules against the limits of waiting for clearer harms. The core tension: act too early and risk distorting innovation; wait too long and risk missing real problems. The challenge is building institutions that can adapt as the technology evolves, without imposing costs that slow it down or entrench incumbents.
Video of the full panel is embedded below.