AI Hype and the Capture of EU AI Regulation

Writing about AI hype seems to create an interesting paradox: every contribution about AI, whether critical or not, seems only to feed the hype. At the same time, this apparent contradiction justifies the need for a critical theoretical approach of hype studies.

At first glance, hype and law also appear to be contradictory, as the setting of norms in democratic constitutional states follows established, formalized procedures. Democratic consensus-building is often time-consuming; in the context of digital regulation, this is frequently used to explain the ‘legal lag’—the notion that law is slow and perpetually trails behind technical development. Hype works through speeding up processes, urging stakeholders to take hasty decisions. It creates urgency and pressure to act instantly, in contrast with legal thinking that rationalizes through procedural and structural reasoning.

Even if this observation is only partially accurate, it appears the law itself is succumbing to AI hype. This is evident, on the one hand, in the heated discussions in faculties of law regarding their role in the age of ubiquitous AI applications, the purported ‘revolution’ of the practical legal market by AI, and the field of digital regulation itself, where there is significant pressure to suppress regulation of AI out of concern it will harm innovation.