Harvard Business Review

As businesses and governments race to make sense of the impacts of new, powerful AI systems, governments around the world are jostling to take the lead on regulation. Business leaders should be focused on who is likely to win this race, more so than the questions of how or even when AI will be regulated.

The Biden administration has launched the Internet for All initiative, which may well be the boldest digital inclusion project in history, and aspires to close an essential gap in the world’s most valuable and second most evolved digital economy. The funding for the initiative draws from an unprecedented $65 billion sum from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act earmarked for the purpose of closing the digital divide. The program, as designed, could lead to a misallocation of resources, as well as inefficiencies and gaps in coordination and implementation.

The US government is negotiating a plan to address one of the most important—but overlooked—problems facing the country: the digital divide. While this problem is often talked about as a simple problem of access to broadband internet service, it is deeper and more complex than mere infrastructure. In truth, the digital divide also is a problem of inclusivity, institutions, and individual proficiency, and a solution needs to address all four dimensions. To close the digital divide, policymakers should: