Rethinking approaches to regulation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
2022.07.17 13:10
Mass adoption of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) potentially could trigger an even larger than projected transition to a new taxonomy of regulation concerning various fields of human life, including that of finance and the market itself. New technologies are enabling new concepts, systems and frameworks, such as driverless cars, drone postal deliveries and central bank digital currencies (CBDC). In the foreseeable future, the role of technology in our society would be exceeding the boundaries of an elementary subsystem, where its regulation would be designated to the stakeholders or the market itself.
A persistent theme of this short submission is the currently changing approaches to the regulation of technological risks following a rapid transition to the wholesale level leveraging and mass adoption of technologies. I tend to believe that effective regulatory design for new technologies embraced by the currently ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution should, first of all, be considerate of prerequisites as set by the notions of dominant product design, public perception of technological risk and social benefits versus technological risks.
Pavel Kulikov is a partner at PLL Legal & CBP in Zürich, Switzerland, advising startups and big firms on financial market regulatory matters, compliance and private equity. His academic research works on New Taxonomy for Technology Regulation on the Financial Markets; DLT Regulation reforms and fintech are often cited on both sides of the Atlantic. Pavel is also an author and a host of a popular LegalTask program on Swiss TV.
