The global AI regulation landscape and operator roles
Almost every AI-specific law makes the same two design choices: classify systems by risk, and assign duties by role. Once you see that pattern, individual laws become variations rather than separate subjects.
Why this matters for the AIGP exam
Domain II questions often describe a regulatory approach without naming the country and ask you to identify it, or name a role and ask what duties follow. Knowing the shared structure is what makes that answerable.
The essentials
- Risk-based classification. Obligations scale with the harm a use case can do. The EU AI Act's four tiers are the fullest version, and most other regimes echo the idea.
- Role-based responsibility. Who owes what depends on position in the value chain: the provider who develops and places a system on the market, the deployer who uses it, and importers and distributors in between. South Korea's AI Basic Act is the notable contrast — it collapses these into a single "business operator" role.
- The EU as template. The EU AI Act is the most comprehensive horizontal AI law and the reference point other regimes are compared against.
- The US as patchwork. No federal AI statute; instead, sectoral enforcement of existing law (FTC, EEOC, CFPB) plus state laws such as the Colorado AI Act and NYC's Local Law 144.
- Light-touch regimes. Japan and the UK have so far chosen guidance and existing regulators over comprehensive statutes.
- China's targeted rules. Not one act but successive regulations aimed at specific technologies: recommendation algorithms, deep synthesis, generative AI.
What the exam asks
Match a described approach to its jurisdiction, and place an organisation in the right operator role from the facts of a scenario. The role question matters because it recurs in every later EU AI Act topic.
Going deeper
This page is the condensed version. The full topic — with the detail above expanded and practice questions attached — is in the app, inside Domain II. Domain I, a quarter of the course, is free to try first.
Back to the AIGP study guide.
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