Policymakers Should Focus on Turning AI Aspirations Into Reality

Policymakers often focus on the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), so the White House-sponsored conference on AI Aspirations earlier this month provided a welcome alternative as a series of government officials took the stage to outline an optimistic vision for how AI could drive progress in various sectors. The breadth of the topics they covered at the conference—including health, education, transportation, energy, and weather—demonstrated the potential for the public sector to address important societal challenges using AI. With growing awareness of the potential benefits of AI, it is time for the federal government to create a national AI adoption strategy to accelerate its deployment.

Many government officials at the conference highlighted how AI is an important tool that can help solve critical challenges across multiple sectors, including:

• Education: U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona discussed how educators can implement AI in classrooms to improve student outcomes. Teachers can use AI in their classrooms to tutor students, create lesson plans, generate high-quality, engaging readings, reinforce learning in the home, and even offload time-consuming administrative tasks.
• Grid: AIcan have a powerful impact on the electrical grid, such as by anticipating increased demand and predicting and mitigating risks, such as weather events, that can cause outages. Moreover, AI can help quickly, sustainably, and reliably expand the energy grid, which will be essential to meet the growing energy demands of electric vehicles.
• Transportation: Cities can use AI to predict places with a high risk of traffic accidents and improve safety. These types of “smart city” applications can improve residents’ quality of life in cities and communities across America.
• Semiconductors: Dana Weinstein at the Office of Science and Technology Policy noted that potential to use AI to design new and more sustainable semiconductor chips in the next few years, dramatically speeding up development.
• Government Services: Shalonda Young, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, discussed how the government can adopt AI to improve customer service. For example, AI chatbots can provide accurate information to users, making the government more accessible to the public and reducing bureaucracy.
• Disaster response: The government anticipates an increase in “billion-dollar disasters” in the years ahead. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can use AI for faster and more precise forecasting to better prepare and respond to potentially catastrophic weather events, which could help save lives and protect property. AI could also help streamline the relief process and improve interagency operability for disaster relief.

The AI Aspirations conference offered clear examples of the vast potential of AI to transform every sector of our economy and how the government provides services. This type of grand vision for how AI can improve the country is a necessary step for building support for greater adoption of AI. As Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo noted during her remarks, government needs to strike “the right balance of minimizing the risk and maximizing the benefits [of AI].” President Biden’s executive order on AI last year launched a whole-of-government effort to develop and use AI in the United States, but policymakers should not rest on their laurels.

The big question for policymakers is no longer whether AI matters, but how best to enable this progress. Implementation of AI in the United States, especially in key sectors of the economy like healthcare, education, transportation, and government, will require policymakers to work closely with industry. Creating a national AI adoption roadmap that outlines sector-specific opportunities and barriers, as well as a detailed strategy for achieving widespread adoption of AI in each of these sectors, should be a top priority for the next administration and Congress.