Three Big Ideas #3
Sichuan peppercorns, the UN AI Office, and laying solid foundations
Welcome to our weekly Three Big Ideas roundup, in which we serve up a curated selection of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
🥡 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
If you’re a fan of spicy food, the New York Times served up a treat last week. In a fascinating article on ‘The Life-Affirming Properties of Sichuan Pepper’ (paywalled), one extract in particular piqued my curiosity. In 1968, the American government banned imports of Sichuan peppercorns, over fears they posed a biological threat to domestic citrus crops. Some of the numbing spice surreptitiously continued to make its way into the US, but it was generally low-quality and often only sold to Chinese-speaking customers under the counter to minimise detection from inspectors. In 2005, the import rules were relaxed, but the peppercorns still had to be heated to 140°F for ten minutes to kill any potentially harmful bacteria – which dulled its potency. Only years later, when this requirement too was dropped, could the unique ingredient properly showcase its magical qualities.
New businesses sprang up, now able to freely sell unmeddled Sichuan peppercorns, while existing corporations – including the likes of McDonald’s and Panda Express – got in on the action too. Americans’ appetite for the distinctive properties of Sichuan peppercorns no doubt partly explains why Sichuan restaurants are increasingly muscling in on Cantonese restaurants’ monopoly on the broader ‘Chinese’ food scene in the US.
What this all very tangibly brings home is how regulations can shape our economic possibilities in quite unexpected ways. It can only make one wonder about what other pleasures existing rules may be preventing us from experiencing. In a recent interview with The Telegraph (paywall), Science Secretary Peter Kyle gestures towards one contender – lab-grown meat. Though British regulators have taken some progressive steps forward, startups in the sector remain highly regulated. As with the Sichuan peppercorn, who knows what culinary delights might be in store for us if we gave lab-grown meat more space to flourish?
🇺🇳 Anastasia Bektimirova, Researcher
Liverpool was not the only destination du jour last weekend. So too was New York, as foreign policy delegates descended on the United Nations (UN) headquarters for the Summit of the Future ahead of the General Assembly this week. The tech policy community had expected the long-anticipated announcement of the new UN AI Office, as recommended in the report from the High-level Advisory Body on AI. But that failed to materialise yet. The closest we get to it in the Global Digital Compact, which was supposed to lay down the plans, is “an international scientific panel on AI and a global AI policy dialogue.”
The game play change might be a reason. In a shift from the Advisory Body’s interim report, which attempted to craft a UN-led superstructure for global AI governance, the new report calls for a “light touch mechanism,” and says that “the case for an agency with reporting, monitoring, verification, and enforcement powers is not yet made.” The purpose of the proposed AI Office would be to “ensure information sharing across the UN system,” and fill any gaps in the flurry of national, multilateral and global initiatives so that the excluded parts of the Global South could have a say in AI governance. Instead of falling into the trap of directing resources at governing every shiny new thing, the report is a reality check. This course-correction, however, is a far cry from the initial power play.
So, what does the adopted Global Digital Compact leave us with? The international scientific panel on AI is expected to produce an annual report surveying AI opportunities and risks. But the AI Safety Institute (AISI) -led International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI is doing just that. The global AI policy dialogue, another adopted recommendation, is already what the AI Safety Summit, and its sequels, are tasked with. Rather than pooling resources as intended, the UN’s efforts risk adding more layers to an already complex AI governance landscape.
As several reports argued this year (e.g. Onward, The Tony Blair Institute), the international network of AISIs, which have already built impressive capacity, should take the lead in setting standards, including for safety evaluations, and collaborative research efforts on advancing scientific understanding of AI opportunities and risks. And as the first and best-funded one in this network, the UK’s AISI should lead the way in this work.
🧱 Philip Salter, Founder
What do Britain’s recent political leaders have in common with the elites of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Qing Dynasty China and the Polish Commonwealth? Answer – they all tinkered ineffectually while their metaphorical ‘Romes’ burned. That’s according to Foundations, a new essay from our Adviser Sam Bowman, and friends of the network Ben Southwood and Samuel Hughes, which is setting British policy discussions ablaze.
The thesis is easy to explain: our economy has stagnated because we have denied it the foundations on which to grow. Investment has been all but banned in housing, transport and energy, effectively prohibiting many of the most valuable investments that could be made in the UK. As such, instead of devising intricate schemes to try to stimulate and crowd in investment, we should focus on simply giving the private sector the platform and permission to build. It’s what we’ve done historically, and it’s what many other countries around the world are still doing.
While the diagnosis is simple, the solutions are less so. Whether it’s unpicking the Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA), removing the second staircase requirement, reforming nutrient neutrality rules, or disincentivising lengthy judicial reviews, there is plenty to build on. And yet, while some of this won’t be easy, as the paper concludes, “the hardest things to create are ours already. No government can legislate into being a respect for the rule of law, appetite for scientific discovery and entrepreneurship, or tolerance of eccentricity and debate.”