A long-running Senate task force has issued its policy recommendation for federal funding for artificial intelligence: $32 billion a year, covering everything from infrastructure to grand challenges to national security risk assessments.
This “roadmap” isn’t a bill or a detailed policy proposal, but it nonetheless gives a sense of the scale that lawmakers and “stakeholders” are considering whenever they get to the real thing — though the likelihood of that happening at during an election year is vanishingly small.
In a final report released by the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the bipartisan task force identifies the most important areas of investment to keep the US competitive with its adversaries abroad.
Here are some highlights on the roadmap:
- “An intergovernmental AI R&D effort, including related infrastructure,” meaning DOE, NSF, NIST, NASA, Commerce, and half a dozen other agencies and departments can format and share data in a AI-friendly way. Artificial Intelligence. In some ways, this relatively simple task is the most daunting of all and will likely take years to complete.
- Fund US AI hardware and software work at the semiconductor and architecture level, both through the CHIPS Act and elsewhere.
- Further funding and expansion of the still nascent National AI Research Fund.
- The “artificial intelligence grand challenges” to stimulate innovation through competition in “artificial intelligence applications that will fundamentally transform the process of science, engineering or medicine and fundamental issues in safe and efficient software and hardware design.”
- “Support AI preparedness and cybersecurity” in elections, particularly to “mitigate AI-generated content that is objectively false while protecting First Amendment rights.” Probably harder than it sounds!
- “Modernizing the federal government and improving the delivery of government services” “by updating the IT infrastructure to use modern data science and artificial intelligence technologies and developing new technologies to find inefficiencies in US code, federal rules and procurement programs” . I understand what they are saying here, but this is very important for an AI program.
- Lots of vague but big defense-related things like “assessing and mitigating AI-enhanced chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats by DOD, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DOE, and other relevant agencies ».
- Consider the ‘regulatory loophole’ in finance and housing, where AI-based processes can be used to further marginalize vulnerable groups.
- “Consider whether other possible uses of artificial intelligence should either be highly restricted or prohibited. After a section on potentially harmful things like AI-based social ratings.
- Legislation banning child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence and other non-consensual images and media.
- Ensure that NIH, HHS, and FDA have the necessary tools to evaluate AI tools in healthcare and medical applications.
- “Establish a coherent approach to public-facing transparency requirements for artificial intelligence systems,” private and public.
- Improve the general availability of “content source information” — that is, training data. What was used to make a model? Are you using the model to train it further? And so on. AI makers will fight this tooth and nail until they can adequately sanitize the illegally stored data they used to create today’s AIs.
- Consider the risks and benefits of using proprietary versus open source AI (if the latter ever exists in a scalable form).
You can read the full report here; there are many more places where the above came from (a longer list than I expected to write). No budget numbers are suggested.
Since the next six months will be spent mostly on election-related wrangling, this document serves more to engage with a lot of general ideas than to push through actual legislation. Much of what is being proposed would require months, if not years, of research and iteration before a law or rule is reached.
The AI industry is moving faster than the rest of the tech sector, which means it’s outpacing the federal government by several orders of magnitude. While the priorities listed above are mostly prudent, one wonders how many of them will remain relevant until Congress or the White House actually takes action.
