What You Need To Know About Trump's "AI Initiative"
President Trump issued an executive order yesterday announcing
what the White House calls an “American AI Initiative.” The order encourages
research in the field of artificial intelligence in the United States.
The announcement is based on principles that touch on issues
like AI and jobs, and the relationship between American artificial research and
the international community. The first principle lays out the main idea: the
U.S. should “drive technological breakthroughs in AI across the Federal
Government, industry, and academia in order to promote scientific discovery,
economic competitiveness, and national security.”
In short, the executive order says to the federal
government, academia, and private sector: Do more artificial intelligence.
The memo does not provide any new money for the initiative,
although it does call for the White House Office of Management and Budget and
the relevant agencies to prioritize funding artificial intelligence.
Why Now?
“AI has become one of the hot topics here in Washington,”
says Jim Lewis, a senior vice president and director of the technology policy
program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Everyone’s
worried about it, and they’re worried about being in a race with China.”
It’s worth remembering that artificial intelligence is
already everywhere, with or without an executive order. That’s because tech
companies, universities, and researchers use AI—and the important field of
machine learning that is under the AI umbrella—to get things done. For example,
AI-powered systems do everything from recognizing Yelp photos and estimating
real estate prices to translating languages on Facebook or even just helping
noise-canceling headphones work.
“AI is not just a curiosity,” says Tom Mitchell, the interim
dean of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and a machine learning
expert. “It’s a technology that’s going to fundamentally change much of our
daily lives.”
He points to rapid advances in AI over the last decade, and
says that the forthcoming decade could result in even faster development in the
field.
What Can The Govt. Do To Help?
“I think we need, and suspect will get, more than symbolic
support,” Mitchell says. One key place where the government could get involved
the field is using artificial intelligence to help improve medicine. AI has
already shown itself to be good at doing things like reading X-rays or even
potentially speeding up how fast an MRI machine can run, but it could also help
look for patterns at a larger scale.
Consider all the electronic medical records at hospitals
across the country. Using machine learning algorithms to look for patterns in
those files could potentially help experts “discover better ways of treating
diseases,” Mitchell says. Figuring out how to make that data shareable, while
also respecting patient privacy, is a job that the government could help with
because it’s a project that’s much bigger than just one hospital. “Then it’s
not a technology problem, so much as it’s an organizational problem,” he says.
Another action the government could take: help create more
skilled AI workers. “We have a significant shortage of AI expertise, relative
to the demand for it,” he says, whose high starting salaries are evidence of
just that shortage. What if the government funded, or incentivized, a master’s
program in AI that coders could take? Actions like that, he says, could help
eliminate the labor bottleneck. (The executive order does say that agencies
giving out grants for education should “consider AI as a priority area.”
The International Picture
Competition with China is a big part of the subtext to this
announcement, even if the order does not mention the country by name. On that
point, Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that
the U.S. is already at an advantage.
“It’s good to have a strategy,” he says. “It would be better
if it had some money attached to it, but let’s be a little more confident about
how the U.S. will move forward.”
Meanwhile, Pedro Domingos, the author of the AI-focused book
The Master Algorithm, and a professor of computer science at the University of
Washington, says that this is a time that calls for more U.S. leadership in the
field. “We're at a Sputnik moment for AI, and we need the White House to take
the lead in getting government, academia and industry working together to
accelerate progress in the field,” he wrote, via email. “China is on track to
surpass the US in AI within a decade.”
What are your thoughts on this increase in AI research? Is it the right or wrong move for out country to lead the charge into the new AI discoveries? Let me know in the comments.
See you all tomorrow.
Buh-bye.
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