More regulation generally gives an advantage to larger companies over smaller ones since it creates barriers to entry; compliance costs usually increase sublinearly with revenue. (E.g., it's a lot easier for Microsoft to hire a dedicated lawyer than it is for a garage start-up.)
This idea that "companies always want less regulation than is socially efficient" is usually based on a misunderstanding of economics.
I'm glad you called out regulatory capture. The cynic in me wonders if Microsoft is so far behind in some AI aspects like this that they're taking this approach to slow down Amazon's and Google's forays into selling this tech to businesses and government.
The real cynic would say that Microsoft knows that this stuff is coming in legislation anyway (because too many people are too pissed off by now), and those who are on the bandwagon early - and actively helping to push it forward - will be rewarded with positive PR, while also helping to sink competition that's not so fast on the uptake.
I doubt Microsoft is behind in face recognition, which is an AI task that's been studied and done to death in academic literature. Microsoft has actually made some of the most important discoveries in AI (invented ResNets, co-authored Faster R-CNN), they can surely pull up a mere FR system.
This actually made me pause and think about what is already known about me. I wonder if there is a word for the collective knowledge about an individual.
Maybe if you can't do business without making sure you're not causing harm, you shouldn't do business at all.
Of course anti-competitive lobbying happens all the time. But if it's not economically feasible for a Scrappy Gang of Dropouts in The Garage follow to regulations that protect people's lives and freedom in this country, I'm cool with them finding another country, or their own deserted island perhaps.
I think you missed my point and the discussion on Wikipedia. You seem to be assuming that essentially all regulations are correctly aligned with the public interest. If that were the case, you'd be correct that compliance costs would (in an efficient equilibrium) be correctly internalized, merely excluding inefficiently small companies from the market [1]. However, this is not the world we live in. Uncountable historical examples, and the massive size of the corporate lobbying industry, are clear evidence that companies often shape their own regulations to their benefit. So on priors it's much more likely that Microsofts public call for regulation -- which is just a particular form of lobbying -- is in their own interest, not some pure expression of civic duty.
[1] Of course, we are not automatically in an efficient equilibrium, and there exists worlds where the reduced competition due to barrier to entry create costs that are larger than the benefits of the regulation. But I'm happy to put that scenario aside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
More regulation generally gives an advantage to larger companies over smaller ones since it creates barriers to entry; compliance costs usually increase sublinearly with revenue. (E.g., it's a lot easier for Microsoft to hire a dedicated lawyer than it is for a garage start-up.)
This idea that "companies always want less regulation than is socially efficient" is usually based on a misunderstanding of economics.