The barrier to change is not just regulation. Regulation is downstream of public opinion. Compare China and the US. In China, public sentiment around AI seems to be a hunger to use it for fear of being left behind. Whereas in America, it's an apathetic pessimism around inequality and safety.

China has seen much faster growth in recent decades, which incentivizes people to work hard and have faith it will yield results. In America, the average standard of living has not improved for a long time, so instead of a desire to change things, like cutting regulation to speed up drug discovery, most Americans are quiet quitting.

In this climate, the unfortunate reality is that we're unlikely to see a popular revolution to drastically change things one way or another. Instead, we're much more likely to see regulatory capture by a small number of wealthy, powerful, motivated people. And everyone else will complain on social media, but that's about it.