Politicians Look To Insert Themselves Into Artificial Intelligence Advances

The rapid rise – in both hype and promise – of artificial intelligence (AI) has, naturally, captured the interest of the political class. 

A new Senate report that attempts to show how lawmakers and the rest can help make AI better for everyone—or something—shows politicians groping for ways to seem relevant in the AI bonanza. The report is long on things politicians and government agencies must be aware of. However, the real meat of the report comes from the money the federal government should spend on AI research. The opening bid is $32 billion a year.

What possibly could require so much federal spending on an area already rife with private-sector funding?  Plenty, it seems, including:

Providing local election assistance funding to support AI readiness and cybersecurity through the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Election Security grants.

How AI would help run elections, never mind make them more secure, is an open question. But wait, there's more!

Providing funding and strategic direction to modernize the federal government and improve the delivery of government services, including through activities such as updating IT infrastructure to utilize modern data science and AI technologies and deploying new technologies to find inefficiencies in the U.S. code, federal rules, and procurement programs.

Supporting R&D and interagency coordination around the intersection of AI and critical infrastructure, including smart cities and intelligent transportation system technologies.

And such and such. As the Wall Street Journal noted, these examples, and many more, all have the whiff of old-fashioned federal pork: 

Much of Washington's AI spending would be redundant. Many universities that Republicans want to de-fund because of their response to antisemitism would ironically benefit from the largesse. So would progressive think tanks that want to hamstring business innovation and say AI discriminates against minorities.

Mr. Schumer appears to be trying to cajole Republicans to sign up for his AI spending binge by dangling more money for defense-related AI. “It's going to be a very large number,” Mr. Schumer said. There may be an argument for Washington to spend more on AI military applications, but then Congress should simply increase the defense budget.

Or government could allow the private sector to continue to conduct its own AI research and piggy-back on those investments for its own needs.

But that would mean losing control over the outcomes, and worse, it would mean losing a grand opportunity to grow the government.

And we simply can't allow that to happen, can we?

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.