AI & the Federal Government
As artificial intelligence continues to appear in the headlines, both positive and negative, there is one group that is certainly benefiting from the publicity. Companies, Associations, and universities are hiring lobbyists to make their views known to the federal government. Over 120 public and private entities lobbied the government in the 1st quarter of this year, with 158 doing the same for all of last year and 30 in 2017. The more obvious companies that have a major stake in the technology, such as Amazon (AMZN), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), and Nvidia (NVDA), were joined by the American Bar Association, the Consumer Technology Association, the Recording Industry Association, and the Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA, along with Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University, Harvard University, Southern Methodist University, and Washington State University, in making their opinions known to the government, and, of course, a number of pure AI companies themselves.
A number of large companies suddenly realized that they were behind in the ‘AI race’ and have announced plans and projects to find ways to integrate cognitive AI into their platforms, with Microsoft leading the way with plans to integrate ChatGPT into Bing search. A number of these companies cut Ai project staffing at the end of last year as the technology space contracted, especially those Ai projects relating to Ai ethics, are now planning to build Ai project staffing to maintain an active level of competition with their peers., while the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying organization in the US, spent ~$19m in 1Q, including establishing a taskforce on AI in the House Committee on Financial Services, implementing the National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2020 (primarily ‘studies’ and standards research), and began drafting bills relating to automated vehicles. At least three major insurance companies lobbied for congressional efforts to better understand the commercial use of AI, and a number of universities lobbied to support the Army AI Center and distributed AI applications for defense, as they likely get funded as part of the center’s project budget.
A number of large companies suddenly realized that they were behind in the ‘AI race’ and have announced plans and projects to find ways to integrate cognitive AI into their platforms, with Microsoft leading the way with plans to integrate ChatGPT into Bing search. A number of these companies cut Ai project staffing at the end of last year as the technology space contracted, especially those Ai projects relating to Ai ethics, are now planning to build Ai project staffing to maintain an active level of competition with their peers., while the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying organization in the US, spent ~$19m in 1Q, including establishing a taskforce on AI in the House Committee on Financial Services, implementing the National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2020 (primarily ‘studies’ and standards research), and began drafting bills relating to automated vehicles. At least three major insurance companies lobbied for congressional efforts to better understand the commercial use of AI, and a number of universities lobbied to support the Army AI Center and distributed AI applications for defense, as they likely get funded as part of the center’s project budget.
As we noted previously, there has been a a bit of backlash from a large group of researchers and academics concerning the rapid pace at which AI systems are being developed, with an emphasis on the ethical use of such software, with some of the more extreme groups pushing for an investigation into OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, citing GPT-4 as ‘biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety”, while lobbying for ‘algorithmic transparency’, as comments by IBM that they would be replacing 7,800 workers with Ai systems over the next few years sparked news organizations to create headlines like: “AI could replace equivalent of 300 million jobs – report” (BBC – 3/28/23), ChatGPT: the 10 jobs Most at Risk of Being Replaced by AI (business Insider- 4/9/23), or “How AI is Replacing Jobs 2023: A Look at the Statistics (Gitnux Blog – 3/23/23) that cited “AI is estimated to replace 85m jobs by 2025, but 97m new jobs will be created due to AI”, sort of a bad news/good news headline that would likely incite almost any labor-related organization, and send publicity seeking Congress men and women into a media frenzy.
It is obviously quite important that the government understands the Ai industry and the impact it can and will have on society and US economics, but we fear it will become both the media calling card and a path to screen time for politicians, and then fade away when a new hot button issue takes its place, just like the Metaverse did last year. AI, particularly the ethics and legalities of AI are extremely complex issues and the odds are that politicians are not going to spend a lot of time on them unless it affects them directly, perhaps when it affects a large campaign donor. Lobbyists are trying to push their client’s agendas to politicians now that the public has been made aware that they now have another ‘fear’ to consider, without the positive balance that shows what AI is able to do for society. But eye-catching headlines are not usually made from “AI Could Help to Cure Cancer” over “AI Will Take Your Job Soon”. At best, we can expect the government to form more committees to study the problem when we could use AI to end Gerrymandering by balancing population districts, polling constituents to find out how they feel about a variety of topics, or dig through local, state, and federal budgets to look for fraud, overspending, or projects that benefit only a small portion of the electorate, the sort of things politicians are supposed to do. Perhaps the better headline would be, “Politicians to be Replaced by AI by 2028”.
It is obviously quite important that the government understands the Ai industry and the impact it can and will have on society and US economics, but we fear it will become both the media calling card and a path to screen time for politicians, and then fade away when a new hot button issue takes its place, just like the Metaverse did last year. AI, particularly the ethics and legalities of AI are extremely complex issues and the odds are that politicians are not going to spend a lot of time on them unless it affects them directly, perhaps when it affects a large campaign donor. Lobbyists are trying to push their client’s agendas to politicians now that the public has been made aware that they now have another ‘fear’ to consider, without the positive balance that shows what AI is able to do for society. But eye-catching headlines are not usually made from “AI Could Help to Cure Cancer” over “AI Will Take Your Job Soon”. At best, we can expect the government to form more committees to study the problem when we could use AI to end Gerrymandering by balancing population districts, polling constituents to find out how they feel about a variety of topics, or dig through local, state, and federal budgets to look for fraud, overspending, or projects that benefit only a small portion of the electorate, the sort of things politicians are supposed to do. Perhaps the better headline would be, “Politicians to be Replaced by AI by 2028”.
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