  With the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related
technologies in our daily lives, fear and anxiety about their misuse as well as
the hidden biases in their creation have led to a demand for regulation to
address such issues. Yet blindly regulating an innovation process that is not
well understood, may stifle this process and reduce benefits that society may
gain from the generated technology, even under the best intentions. In this
paper, starting from a baseline model that captures the fundamental dynamics of
a race for domain supremacy using AI technology, we demonstrate how socially
unwanted outcomes may be produced when sanctioning is applied unconditionally
to risk-taking, i.e. potentially unsafe, behaviours. As an alternative to
resolve the detrimental effect of over-regulation, we propose a voluntary
commitment approach wherein technologists have the freedom of choice between
independently pursuing their course of actions or establishing binding
agreements to act safely, with sanctioning of those that do not abide to what
they pledged. Overall, this work reveals for the first time how voluntary
commitments, with sanctions either by peers or an institution, leads to
socially beneficial outcomes in all scenarios envisageable in a short-term race
towards domain supremacy through AI technology. These results are directly
relevant for the design of governance and regulatory policies that aim to
ensure an ethical and responsible AI technology development process.
