GDPR was supposed to help "protect data" of users. But what really happened what that users got nagged with more dialogue boxes & pop-ups.
I suspect this call for regulation will make technology like AI have laws that limit the participation of of "little guys" in the sectors.
Technology a few decades may look like finance.
1. In finance only people with special permits are allowed to run a bank. — their may be permits for collecting & storing user data these will be as few as banks & close to the government via crony relationships as banks are today.
2. Just like how people with little money in finance are not allowed to use the Kelly Criterion on equities exchanges like Ameritrade due to "Pattern Day Trader Rules". People that don't have the necessary data that can fit ML models sufficiently to the governments mandated model accuracy will be banned for building & deploying such models in the wild.
3. Just like how in some countries financiers without CFA are not allowed to talk about Thier personal opinion in financial markets. People with "Chartered Artificial Intelligence Advisor" papers will not be allowed to have Thier opinion on certain ML techniques that may be used in the wild.
Regulation is seldom made for the benefit of the public. I don't know why AI custodians are begging for it (unless it's to be on the panel of experts of course)
I suspect the Industry of AI & technology in general is going to fall for the bug scam of regulatory capture as all previous industries have done [1]
But my question is, What good do you expect form AI regulation?
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
You've answered your own question. They want to be the owners of the industry.
What good will come of regulation? Unfortunately:
1. Nobody actually knows
2. Bad regulation might be worse than no regulation for public safety or security or whatever metric you care about
3. It might turn out that for AI alignment, any regulation pushes us closer to doom. (Ignore this if you don't believe that AI can ever be an existential threat.)
In AI spaces, even people who are extremely concerned about the acceleration of AI capabilities while safety lags behind don't know if slowing down research will even help. The reason is that regulation is local, but capabilities growth has a global effect. So if the "most ethical" country (and this is hypothetical, I don't propose that US firms are or are not the leaders in AI ethics) slows down capabilities research, "less ethical" countries will overtake them and we'll get more dangerous AI as a result, bringing us closer to a Bad End.
AI capabilities research is an extraordinarily dangerous game and also an inevitability at this point. Should the US regulate AI research? I wouldn't trust anyone who has a firm position on that.
And of course, as you say, even if we do regulate the industry, not all regulation is the same. Any actual regulation should be driven by safety research, by the open source community, and by cybersecurity more than it should be driven by the leaders in capabilities research.