A less than 6-year-old Philadelphia-based startup has been tapped as part of an effort to shape legislation and regulation of artificial intelligence alongside tech giants Meta and IBM, a move the 17-person firm says could present opportunity for its own growth in the space.
Zaviant, a data privacy and cybersecurity company, is one of a number of organizations in the Open Loop initiative, which was originally launched in 2021 by Facebook parent company Meta (NASDAQ: META). The goal of Open Loop is to develop policy recommendations regarding AI and other emerging technologies. How — or if — AI should be regulated by the government is one of the most hotly-contested issues in tech right now and likely will be for years to come.
Will Sweeney, the founder and managing director of Zaviant, said the company began building a relationship with Meta after sponsoring and hosting a variety of data security and privacy conferences in recent years. Several members of the firm's team sat in on Open Loop sessions for a few months before Zaviant was asked to join as a participating company in December.
"It's an iterative approach to developing policy and leveraging both the technical expertise that the folks in the consortium are bringing alongside policymakers to try to put out policy that makes sense, takes into consideration the advancements that are happening to the generative AI technology, but also identifies the risks around AI," Sweeney said.
He added that the sessions create a "feedback loop" so that as AI evolves Open Loop members can continue to modify and adapt policy recommendations.
In addition to Meta, other big tech players like IBM and Accenture are involved in Open Loop. The consortium of companies, which Sweeney estimates totals about two dozen, are working with governmental authorities like the National Institute of Standards and Technology and legislators to inform their approach. Some companies also have their own policymakers present to engage in dialogue about how AI can be regulated internally.
The latter aligns with Zaviant's increasingly in-demand work, which Sweeney said has in many ways been underscored by AI and how to properly and safely implement it into a business. Since its founding in 2018, Zaviant has seen an average of 85% year over year growth.
Sweeney said the company's involvement with Open Loop and industry leaders could be a boon for business going forward.
"This is going to continue to be something that at a board level is going to be talked about quite a bit," Sweeney said. "It represents an area of growth for our company. ... We're going to need to be able to guide our clients through those issues and so I think it's an area of opportunity for us definitely, to be in those conversations with Open Loop."
Sweeney said that despite the U.S. being on the cutting edge of AI technology development, the country is "playing catch up" in terms of regulating and legislating it, making the work at Open Loop all the more critical. He pointed to the European Union's passage of the EU AI Act last month. It is the world's first comprehensive law on AI regulation.
"I think tech companies being involved very early in the process and having a voice in those conversations is a good thing from the standpoint of, it helps to bring that level of sophistication to those conversations for policymakers, and it helps policymakers really understand what the risks are more clearly," Sweeney said. "The goal here is really to create that collaborative communication where we can develop policy that makes sense and takes into account the risks that we're trying to mitigate."
