Reminds me of the Mass Effect games, where AI is essentially outlawed (because they revolted against the humans of course, but I can picture less scifi-ish reasons in the real world). I'm sure they're still allowed to use pathfinding algorithms and such, so they probably defined a level of net negative (to society) AI and just regulated that. Starships for example are manually piloted (surely with intelligent support systems and basic auto pilots) IIRC.
Or let me raise a The Culture argument, where computers/AI is hyper-advanced, AIs are friends, and no regulation whatsoever is needed.
I mean real, observable things, not theories.
Human attention span is a finite resource (we can only do so much in one life), and tech startups can consume a lot of that for relatively little payoff. Building a successful startup is like solving the bitcoin hash on your first few cycles. The barrier for entry is low, but you can hit it big (and consume a lot of cheap, finite* power too).
The payoff is worth the risk since our communication technology is nascent and underexplored. We have an abundance of time right now because of what tech has done for us, but the cultural and environmental costs of growing tech are not well understood.
Use of attention span is difficult to measure right now, but that could change in the coming decades. That said, parent comment seems to use "tragedy of the commons" as a stand in for "human nature."