Abstract
Historically, product safety regulations emerge about 50 years after mass availability of a new product. Assuming 1983 as the start of mass production of digital products, we are 43 years into the age of commercial digital products. While there have been many fragmented regulations worldwide, one is reminded of a soccer game between five year olds: all the players are chasing the ball and there is no overarching strategy. Zoomed out, it looks like a global case of regulation by chasing the shiny object—currently “AI.” There is, however, a more methodical, rigorous, and effective approach to how we can govern technology: namely, digital product safety. By looking back at the history of product safety we can devise a more cohesive and effective playbook for digital product safety. I hope to convince readers of the urgency of the following:
- Embracing digital products and digital product safety as core framing needed for human safety in a capitalistic society;
- Recognizing two key forces opposing digital product safety:
- The natural time lag, as 50-70 years are typically required to amass scientific understanding of long-term and complex product behavior and safety risks (referred to as the product episteme); and
- Industry’s “product safety resistance playbook,” which began on December 15, 1953, and has been funded and refined for 73 years; and
- Understanding the scaffolding of a Digital Product Safety Playbook, around which we can coalesce and co-create practical tools to contradict the power and epistemic asymmetry between industry and consumers.