US Congress Joint Economic Committee holds hearing on AI, economic growth, and governance

e e e e e e e e e e e e you for U for pulling this hearing together it should be really interesting uh a number of folks know that I've been heavily involved in these conversations and uh we have been able to really put together a surprising uh amount of sort of bipartisan interest in where we think uh we need to um you know where where we really think the the benefits are going to acre from artificial intelligence and where are the places where we have to be careful and and minimize uh some of the risks so uh I'm very much looking forward to continuing that uh conversation today and um I'm going to introduce our other two distinguished Witnesses Dr Ayana Howard is a dean of engineering at Ohio State University uh previously she was chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of interactive Computing in the College of computing as well as the founder and director of the human automation systems lab uh her career spans higher education NASA's jet propulsion laboratory and the private sector Dr Howard is the founder and president of the board of directors of zy Robotics a Georgia Tech spin-off company that develops mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs she's also a fellow of the American Association for the advancement of Science and the National Academy of inventors and was appointed to the National artificial intelligence advisory committee uh Dr Jennifer uh giso is director of the center for computing research at Sandia National Laboratories where she stewards the center's portfolio of research from fundamental science to state-of-the-art Applications she is also the program executive for the national nuclear security administration's Advanced simulation and Computing program there at Sandia uh previously she served as the Director of the center for computation and Analysis for National Security where she oversaw the use of systems analysis cyber security and data science capabilities to tackle complex National Security challenges thank you Senator Hinrich um let's go ahead and hear from our Witnesses um and Dr Miller everyone gets five minutes and then hopefully we can follow up um with questions Dr Miller thank you chairman Hinrich uh Vice chairman schwier and distinguished members of the committee for allowing me to share my views on AI and its potential to fuel economic growth and governance I'm pragmatist so I'm going to focus on pragmatic applications and policy questions for the fifth of the economy that can Rises Healthcare as mentioned I'm a practicing hospitalist at Hopkins non-resident fellow AI I actually worked for four Regulatory Agencies including the FDA and CMS and the FTC and FCC and I also serve on medpack I should note that today I'm here in my personal capacity and My Views are my own and don't represent those of John's Hopkins AI or medek so I just actually finished a week working in the hospital on the night shift uh it's an interesting experience it's seven days in a row of flying a 747 with analog controls and no autopilot it's not a good thing for us to have systems focused this way across the country and I'd say actually since I first rounded in the hospital as a medical student 15 years ago things haven't really changed I don't really see a lot of change in clinical operations and what we do and the broader economic data support this assertion the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that for around 25 years years uh the hospital industry has had flat or declining labor productivity most years and demand's going up right people are getting sicker we have more elderly patients and we have a labor shortage as a consequence so we're missing uh 78,000 registered nurses 68,000 primary care physicians amongst others and also the the spendings breaking the budget right so Medicare and Medicaid are $ 1.7 trillion doar or more annually and that crowds out other sort of transformative Investments that we want to make and things like Transportation education my personal favorite space exploration and so we got to think differently and so Ai and automation actually can help solve our productivity problem in my industry and let us clinicians do what clinicians do best which is focus on the patients instead paperwork uh patients St face delays and diagnosis clinical errors and tired and fatigued clinical staff were focused on admin tasks so AI is not really a Terminator 3 it's also not really Star Trek it's a inherently pre practical and technical issue for implementing it in healthcare we can use it to automate mudane administrative tasks like physician charting with ambient AI coding and billing imagine if AI were summarizing your clinic visit as you were actually talking with the physician instead have them staring at the computer and imagine if that physician could save time from the 6 hours a day spent on charting uh this is actually being tested today and my colleagues at other hospitals are part of these Pilots it can also augment clinical labor it could assist with mamography interpretation melanoma diagnosis improving efficiency and accuracy identifying areas of concern at Advance of physician review can automate other elements of clinical practice reading pathology slides looking at eegs to check for seizures and other neurologic problems and then a lot of folks are really worried about the labor impact and I have to say that with the average day for a primary care physician estimated at 26.7 hours if they complete all the tasks they're supposed to there's plenty of room for us to have software and automation pick this up for consumers uh the win is huge so if you're a consumer and you have a chronic disease the burden is significant being a diabetic you have to check your sugars you have to give yourself a bunch of shots you have to count your car s watch what you eat it's not easy imagine if we could create Integrated Systems with glucometers to check glucose insulin pumps and we could take that burden away from the patients so they could just focus on going about their life from a policy perspective we have to be careful not to overregulation practical and use existing authorities that we have at agencies like the FDA and the office of national coordinator for Health it and we want sort of uh to F facilitate permissive bottomup Innovation from clinicians nurses Engineers uh and others and we want that to come from the bedside we should also aim to pay for and drive competition amongst new and old care models between humans and technology and we want rapid cycle stacked increment m al Innovation to transform Healthcare we can't tax and spend our way out of this so we must innovate and instead remember why America is great thank you chairman Hinrich Vice chairman schwier members of the committee thank you for the invitation to participate in this important hearing on artificial intelligence and its potential to fuel economic growth and improved governance my name is Adam the and I'm a senior fellow at the R Street Institute where I focus on emerging technology use issues I also recently served as a commissioner on the US Chamber of Commerce Commission on artificial intelligence competitiveness inclusion and Innovation today I will discuss three points relevant to this hearing first Ai and Advanced computational Technologies can help fuel broad-based economic growth and sectorial productivity while also improving consumer Health and Welfare in important ways second to unlock these benefits United States needs to pursue a pro-innovation AI policy Vision that can help bolster our Global competitive advantage and geopolitical security third we can advance these goals through an AI opportunity agenda that includes a learning period moratorium on burdensome new forms of AI regulations I will addre address each point briefly but I've included three appendicies to my testimony for more details AI is set to become the most important general purpose technology of our era and AI could revolutionize every segment of the economy in some fashion the potential exists for AI to drive explosive economic growth and productivity enhancements while predictions vary analysts for forecast at AI could deliver trillions in additional global economic activity and significantly boost annual GDP growth this would be over and above the four trillion of gross output that the US Bureau of economic analysis says that the digital economy already accounted for in 2022 but what really matters is what AI means to every American personally AI is poised to revolutionized Health outcomes in particular AI is already helping with early detection and treatment of cancers Strokes heart disease brain disease sepsis and other ailments as also helping address organ failure paralysis Vision impairments and much more the age of personalized medicine will be driven by AI advancements AI can help make government more efficient as well Ohio Lieutenant Governor John Houston recently used an AI tool to help sift through the state's code of regulations and eliminate 2.2 million words of unnecessary and outdated regulations Governor uh California governor G Gavin Newsome just announced an effort to use generative AI tools to improve public services and cut 8% from the state's government operations budget and Regulators are already using AI to facilitate compliance with existing policies such as postmarket medical device surveillance AI also holds the potential to achieve administrative savings for federal health insurance programs or better yet reduce the number of people dependent on them by identifying and treating ailments earlier there's an important connection as well between Ai and broader National objectives a strong technology base is a key source of strength and prosperity so it is essential we do not undermine Innovation and investment as the next great technology race gets underway with China and the rest of the world luckily us innovators are still in the lead had a Chinese operator launched a major generative AI model first it would have been a veritable Sputnik moment for America still China has made Imperial Ambitions clear its Imperial Ambitions clear with the goal to become a global leader in advanced computation by 2030 and it has considerable Talent data and resources to power those Ambitions experts argue that China's whole of society approach is challenging America's traditional advantage es in advanced technology we therefore need a Innovation policy for AI that will not only strengthen our economy and provide better products and jobs but olster bolst bolster no National Security and allow our values of pluralism personal Liberty individual rights and Free Speech to shape Global Information markets and platforms if by contrast fear-based policies impede America's AI developments then China wins to achieve these benefits that AI offers and meet the riseing global competition America needs what I call an AI opportunity agenda an AI opportunity agenda begins with the reiterating the freedom to innovate is the Cornerstone of American Technology policy and the key to unlocking the enormous potential of our nation's entrepreneurs and workers as part of this agenda Congress should craft a learning per period moratorium on new AI proposals such as AI specific bureaucracies licensing systems or liability schemes all of which would be counterproductive and undermine our nation's computational cap capabilities in addition this moratorium should consider preempting burdensome state and local regulatory enactments the conflict with our national AI policy framework next Congress should require our government's existing 439 Federal departments and sub departments to evaluate their current policies towards AI systems with two purposes in mind first to ensure that they are not overburdening algorithmic systems with outdated policies and second to determine how existing rules and regulations are capable of addressing the concerns that some have raised about AI taking inventory of existing rules and regulations can then allow policy makers to identify any gaps that Congress should address using targeted remedies finally an AI opportunity agenda requires openness to new talent and competition experts finding that with a talent War Brewing between the US and China China is moving ahead in some important ways and we must take steps to attract and retain the world's best and brightest in some America's AI policy should be rooted in patience and humility instead of a rush to overregulation definitions I thank you for holding this hearing and for your consideration My Views I look forward to any questions you may have chairman Hinrich Vice chairman schwarer and members of The Joint economic committee thank you for this opportunity to participate in today's hearing on artificial intelligence and his potential for job growth and improved governance and it's it's an honor to be with you today my comments in this testimony are focused on the national importance of AI literacy and his role in augmenting the current and future Workforce talent pool as well as the the government's role in enabling this to happen while demographics of the US are changing these changes are not reflected in the diversity of students pursuing degrees related to AI engineering and computer science according to the 2023 World economic Forum future of jobs report AI continues to shift the skills that are needed within the workforce in some cases creating new jobs augmenting old jobs and eliminating other jobs AI Talent shortage is thus not just a US problem buying outside Talent is thus no longer a viable option to solve this issue too often though we disregard our untapped Talent polls organizations tend to over index on hiring new Talent with needed skills versus upskilling their current Workforce as an educator I have witnessed bright students whom because of gaps in the high school curricula leave the engineering major because they struggle when they take their first discipline specific engineering course yet when we have instituted enrichment programs such as preface and accelerate in the College of Engineering at Ohio State we have seen quantifiable growth in student retention and graduation rates in engineering there is thus no reason Beyond intentionality and resources why organizations government agencies and educational institutions can't Institute similar AI training and literacy programs within their own organizational borders there has been some movement in Congress to expand the digital Equity act into an AI literacy act but there needs to be more as a technology researcher and college dean I also Dabble bit in policy with respect to Ai and regulations I think policy will be critical to building trust policies and regulations allow for equal footing by establishing expectations and ramifications if companies or other governments violate them now some companies will disregard the policies and just pay the fines but there is still some concept of a consequence right now there's a lot of activity around AI regulations there's the European Union AI act which Parliament just adopted in March 2024 there are draft AI guidelines that were released by the Japanese government and slightly different proposals in the US um including President Biden's AI executive order there's State specific activity too over the past five years it's been documented that 17 states have enacted 29 bills that focus on some aspect of AI regulations in fact on June 11th this month I'll be participating in AI Symposium at the Ohio state house which brings academic leaders policy makers and Industry experts to talk about the challenges and opportunities that AI poses for Ohio's universities but this practice of each state coming up with their own rules for regulating AI it will continue to happen if AI bills are not being passed at a federal level and that is a problem I believe we have a lot of room for improvement in making sure that people not only understand technology and the opportunities it provides but also the risk that it creates with new federal regulations more accurate systems and increased AI literacy training and upskilling for the untapped labor market this can happen the intersection of the country's growing dependence on Advanced AI Technologies coupled with a clear shortage of AI Talent is fast becoming a national security issue that must be addressed urgently in 2001 um Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin emphasized in a speech that sophisticated information Technologies including artificial intelligence will be key differentiators in future conflicts the us though we we have our risk and we don't have enough Talent train with sufficient AI literacy that is needed for advancing emerging Technologies critical to maintaining American leadership if we are not careful we might be living another 1957 moment today with nearly every aspect of life evolving to being coupled to AI the US cannot afford to sit back and wait for an AI based crisis to hit we are at a Crossroads the US must make an equivalently bold investment in growing the AI talent pool to help protect democracy citizens quality of life and the overall health of the nation I want to thank you for this opportunity to participate in this important hearing and I appreciate the com committee's attention to this topic and look forward to answering your questions thank you chairman Hinrich chairman Hinrich Vice chairman schwier and distinguished members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the crucial role of the National Labs in driving AI Innovations doing AI at the frontier and at scale is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and solving complex Global challenges today I want to emphasize two key points about how the National Labs can and should contribute to Frontier AI at scale first the role of the National Labs in accelerating Computing Innovations through Partnerships and two the role of the National Labs in critical AI advances aligned with our national interests to date and going forward but first let me provide a brief overview of Sandia National Labs to provide context for the rest of my testimony Sandia is one of three research and development Labs of the US Department of energy National nuclear Security Administration Our Roots go back to World War II and the Manhattan Project throughout its 75y year history as a multi-disciplinary national security engineering laboratory sandia's primary Mission has been to ensure the US nuclear Arsenal is safe secure and reliable and can fully support our nuclear deterrence policy importantly there is strategic Synergy and interdependence between sandia's core Mission and its capabilities-based science and engineering foundations because breakthroughs in one area beget discoveries in others in a cycle that pushes breakthroughs and fuels advancements for decades the department of energy National Labs have been pioneering breakthroughs in high performance Computing through strong public private Partnerships this collaborative approach has greatly enhanced America's overall competitiveness as Mike y from AMD research said quote one of the key takeaways is how impactful the forward programs were on our overall high performance Computing plus AI competitiveness we not only created great systems for the Department of energy but in general it greatly enhanced us overall competitiveness in high performance Computing Ai and energy efficient Computing end quote another powerful example is our recent trab partnership with cerebrus systems that I discussed in my written testimony let me expand upon that impact of that partnership by sharing the latest results funded by nnsa the team achieved a major breakthrough using the cerebras wafer scale engine to run molecular Dynamic simulations 179 times faster than the world's leading supercomputer this required Innovations in both hardware and software this remarkable advancement has the potential to revolutionize Material Science and drive scientific discoveries across various domains for example renewable energ experts will now be able to optimize catalytic reactions and design more efficient energy storage systems by simulating atomic scale processes over extended durations this partnership exemplifies how to open up New Frontiers in scientific research potentially transform Industries and address critical Global challenges while pushing the boundaries of AI and Computing Technologies the due National Labs have also researched AI for decades with a focus on addressing critical challenges for the nation recently 10 of these Laboratories including Sandia showcased their work at the AI Expo for National competitiveness in Washington DC at the Expo the labs highlighted their contributions to AI research and their ability to contribute to the frontiers of Science and solve National energy and security challenges the labs are developing reliable and trustworthy AI based solutions for critical areas such as nuclear deterrence engineering National Security Programs non-proliferation energy and Homeland Security needs and advanced Science and Technology pushing AI to the frontier and scaling it through the department of Energy's frontiers of AI for science security and Technology initiative known as fast will maintain us competitiveness and solve Global challenges the National Labs long history driving Computing Innovations coupled with our strategic AI research focused on key applications makes doe and the lab's invaluable partners for realizing ai's full potential through secure trustworthy and high performance systems in New Mexico we are working with our Premier institutions and Industrial Partners In the state to finalize the New Mexico AI Consortium this Consortium seeks to trans transform the landscape of AI research cultivate a skilled Workforce and build a robust infrastructure support cuttingedge AI research education and commercialization in the state by harnessing the lab's capabilities through academic and Industry Partnerships we can lead the world in AI while safeguarding our national interests I welcome discussions on how we can work together on this critical imperative thank you for convening the hearing and I look forward to your questions thank you uh Vice chairman trer um Dr G ELO uh as as you talk in your testimony um National Labs like Sandy have historically played an important role in Innovation and Technology development um how has that prepared them to Steward AI development the National Labs when it comes to AI development one we have a history of working in AI in the algorithms our work in advancing Computing Technologies has been focused on supporting the simulation missions and the science the labs have but we can also have been using that computing power to start pushing large scale AI we also in the National Labs actually have the world's largest the free world's largest scientific Workforce and the unique data sets that science has yeah so for instance chat GPT and other types of large language models are built on the Corpus of knowledge that's in the internet we know that we can build much more Exquisite and impactful models if we train them on the Exquisite science data that we have in the department of energy and we look forward to using that data to build models and can transform How We Do Science to solve our challenges can can you explain a little bit of that because uh you know there is a tendency among some of our colleagues to think of AI now just as a really elegant chat bot you know something that can respond back with uh you know with language that that you would be hard pressed to know whether it was a human or not on the other on the other side but when you take a large language model and you put it on top of some of these foundational science models so that you can use language as the um basically to coach new science new Alloys new molecules new Pharmaceuticals out of these foundational models you get really powerful combinations can you talk about the opportunities there a little bit I'd be happy to discuss those opportunities because I think you know we have the large language models that are trained on language Visual Arts other popular media we now need to train physics models we need to train them on chemistry data and these models will help us be able to make connections in the science data that today you know I'm a chemist by training I was trained to read the scientific literature comb through the data spend years trying to make sense of the world around me make a hypothesis design experiments to test my hypothesis and iterate right well if we can train a chemistry AI model I have my own student intern right there with all of the world's chemistry knowledge or at least the trusted chemistry knowledge encoded in it and we can use that to make science go much faster and to make connections that no human is ever going to make right and so we're already seeing this immaterials discovery yeah Material Science in particular is just a incredibly slow painful like long-term Endeavor in the normal um course of of How We Do Science and I think this is really going to change that dramatically we heard a little bit about the importance of of um labor and Workforce in having uh maintaining our advantages in I AI but you mentioned something else which is data talk a little bit about what the unique data sets that we have at places like our National Labs within our agencies and and how some of that and for that matter data curation the importance of data curation how that gives us a leg up over some of our competitors as well yeah the data is really at the heart of AI right and we have data both open science data the office of science Laboratories the National Labs broadly do science to in advance the public interest and so most of the science data we have is public but we as the scientists that discover and produce that data know how to interpret it and how to curate it to make it AI ready and to be able to use it to build these models but we also have have access as uh federally funded research and development centers we have trusted Partnerships with the US government and we have access to National Security science data that we use as Sandia does in designing Hypersonic re-entry bodies or nuclear weapons and that data which of course we don't want to make public can be used to train closed Foundation models that will help us change the design life cycles and respond to at the speed of the National Security threats we're facing today great uh I'm going to I'm going to yield back the rest my time Vice chairman thank you chairman hrich um Dr Miller um first you already know I'm a bit of a fan of what you do and the way you think um can you play a game with me instead of just reading a a written question here um I come to you you get to use the full power of what you believe exists today and is going to exist over the next year how could you revolutionize medicine How Could You revolutionize the cost How Could You revolutionize make people well and the morality of ending and and providing cures couple answers one if you had high blood pressure we have software that could titrate the medications for you you could do that at home you could send me a message I could talk with you about exercise and in fact software in theory could tiate lots of medications for lots of common conditions you wouldn't even have to necessarily leave your house house to see me in fact a lot of the time you might not even need to see me and then see me for acute concerns you could automatically have your clinical preventive Services ordered right you could have your colonoscopy ordered uh if relevant to PSA to check for prostate cancer so a lot of care could occur not just outside the walls of the clinic but also even outside needing to see a physician and then let's say you had a condition and you had to do a prior authorization which my colleagues and I don't particularly enjoy doing imagine if the first layer of approval a review and then approval were automated and in near real time you know we have that piece of legislation so um doctor within that that scope um you have the data of my wearables my breath biopsy whatever it may be um do you see a world at least at the basic level um the AI and then the algorithm that's attached to it could write the script absolutely and okay that that was that was clean without a whole lot of struggle um um Dr Howard this is a little bit different but um in and you need to correct me because I was listening to your your discussion about um okay we need more people a variety who are writing Ai and code but in some ways maybe I have the utopian vision of it provides access for more people to be able to do technology most people have no idea how to write an app but they can use the app to do techn technical jobs is there in some ways that yes there may be this hierarchy of here's over here my people writing code doing those things but over here isn't this an empowerment for almost every American to do things that are much more complex yeah it is so when I Define ai literacy is not about creating computer scientists or coders it's about making every citizen understand how to interact with AI to do their jobs better so it's allowing doctors to basically talk in their phone and it transcribe it into the actual records that can then be shared with other doctors so that's really about it that's a much more elegant way to phrase it um miss the um what's my GDP growth what's my um I have a personal fixation on where we are demographically as a country we're getting old very fast we often don't want to talk about it the we have to be brutally honest 100% of the calculated future debt for the next 30 Years interest health care costs and if a decade from now we backfill Social Security it's demographics what is your vision of AI the growth the labor substitution does it save us yeah well nothing can save us but it it can certainly make a major contribution towards the the the betterment of our government processes and potentially our debt uh there's been various estimates Congressman on exactly how much uh AI could contribute to overall gross domestic product uh the low-end being something like at least 1.2% annually but it goes up from there with uh one forecast for 15 slightly louder uh one 1. 2% annually GDP uh boost and 15.7 trillion potential contribution to global economy by 2030 according to another report I have all this data in a supplement to my testimony uh and again the the the estimates very widely but the bottom line is that almost all economists political scientists and consultancies realize that this is a great you know opportunity Fates to once again once again build digital technology companies in the world by world are American Technology right thank you m the all right to our true AI expert Mr berer um first of all Mr Vice chairman thank you very much for commuting this and so Dr Miller in fact I just got the a zoom couple minutes ago with uh Dr George Church at Harvard who is explaining to me that he and his colleagues have built new microorganisms with DNA completely different on the planet um and because of that viruses don't work they're completely completely immune for virus then Lees the idea of making that won't be rejected because the there'll be nothing to reject it'll be unrec just agencies like front but we have seen in the past that the introduc of new technologies to Medicine hasn't necessarily improved things you specifically talk about the absence of Labor productivity growth and healthc Care um the best example I can think of is ehrs electronic health operability Veterans Affairs and DOD have been fighting for years about how to bring them together how do we take ad how do we acknowledge the 17 to 19% GDP on Healthcare like d of the any other place in the world um and use AI to to bring down those costs and bring labor product it's the way of actually us using it in a productive and proactive Fashion Is state and federal regulation there's a role for state and federal regulation but we don't want to go to town to prevent people from innovating at the bedside and getting it into practice areas of cons providing a service why not let them bill right if they can provide that service and compete and if you have that competition within a populationbased payment system like Medicare Advantage or Medicaid manage care you can potentially Drive Service delivery and Innovation to have for consumers to then have Choice Human Service maybe with a Bluetooth exam they could have remote service like audio video only they could have automated service right from software or they could even if we drive po consumers that choice that will improve labor productivity because the consumers will choose great thank you Dr Miller very much Mr the your 10 principles to guide AI policy you you said it's equally important the lawmakers not demand that all AI systems be perfectly explainable and how they operate it we had um secretary Basera in here recently over ways and he said um prior authorization being made by AI what are the limits of explainability what could we as lawmakers really demand in terms of explainability yeah well transparency is a good principle but the question about how to mandate it by law is always tricky and when you get specifically into algorithmic explainability the question is exactly how do you explain all the inner workings of a model model before it gets to market right that's very difficult and what I've articulated in the the 10 principles uh to the AI task force that I sent up were basically to on the back the back end look at to trying to micromanage and figure out how explainable they are quote unquote because I I think that's a Fool's errand I don't think that can be done efficiently without as we look at the output actually right balance but thank you for the principles and Mr chair I'll yield black for the um America's poised to enter the next Decades of the 21st century hand inand with the technology that could possibly Define it artificial intelligence Decades of innovation entrepreneurship have led to this point from industry Titans of Nvidia to Innovation centers like St Louis's own geospatial Hub America is ahe in the AI race and has the resources to double down on its unique challenges advantages yet America's position in AI is under constant pressure China is investing billions and billions into its own AI industry some of this investment is for AI surveillance techch technology to export their alignment their malignant surveillance State abroad there's no telling what could happen if China became the dominant player in the 21st century I'm sure China is watching us Europe is too hop hoping that we bury our burgeoning AI industry in unnecessary regulation and lose sight of what got us in this position in the first place the worst thing we could do in this race towards AI is stifle innovation by unleashing the bureaucrats and putting crippling regulations onto innovators the EU has done this and now Europe will now most likely be watching this race from the sidelines yet there have been Rumblings here on Capitol Hill and fancy Summits all over the world that the US should over regulate this industry this would only serve to hamstring our Innovation and give China the keys to this amazing technology I want to zero in on this because we I I think this is a common theme that we hear about as far as over regulating and I think the American way here is a um we're we're concerned about this but I want to drill down on that a little bit and and maybe Mr the I'll I'll start with you um what do we mean by that like how would you define that Colorado has passed some um regulations that even their governor uh has has questioned and just using that as one example what is it that we should be concerned about uh in this framework certainly uh thank you for the question um so uh first of all as of noon today there are 754 AI bills pending across United States of America 642 of those bills are at the state level that does not include all the city-based bills probably the most important AI bill that's passed so far is New York City not New York state New York City and so there's patchworks and then there's patchworks right and so the the the cumbersome nature of all those compliance rules added on top of each other even if well-intentioned can be enormously burdensome to AI innovators and entrepreneurs so that's just one thing to note the other thing to note is that there's been discussions about the idea of like overarching new bureaucracies or you know certain types of Licensing schemes I have no problem with existing licensing schemes as applied in the in the narrow focused areas where AI might be applied whether it's medicine you know drones driverless cars but an overarching new licensing regime for all things AI is going to be incredibly burdensome that's a European approach we don't want that and Senator let me just say something about your China point because this is really important you know we're here on June 4th this is the 35th Anniversary the T ten and Square massacre and when we talk about like you know the importance of getting this right for America and our Global competitiveness it's important for exactly the reason you pointed out because if if we don't and China succeeds then they're exporting their values their surveillance systems their censorship the very fact that I just utter the term ten and square at this hearing means it won't this hearing won't be seen in China I apologize for that to everyone else here but the bottom line is that that means that what's at stake is geopolitical competitiveness and security and our values as a nation and so this is why we have to get it right so it's interesting because um uh when I was going to school the idea was that um sort of um the more literate a society became the more educated they became the more open they became the more likely they were to become a democracy right and China was kind of always an example maybe if they're if there fewer poor people there and they're more literate that ultimately they'll demand more but interestingly um AI has uniquely and very low Tech AI as it relates to surveillance powered communist regimes right empowers a totalitarian um uh LEL of control that 30 years ago I'm not sure anybody could really foresee and that's certainly what they've capitalized on to your point and and if people think that that is a way to maintain power which has been the way of the world in many places um you're right um you know they become the dominant player in this I do want to just shift with a little bit of the time they have left um and anybody please chime in on this point um but I'll start with you Mr the again big Tech versus little Tech here there I think there's a there's a concern at least that I have that a regulatory scheme or we're doing something that sort of protects the big players but ultimately leaves out the Innovation again that got us to this point now how would how do you view this and what can we do to guard against that because I do think there's some folks that want to more sort of a protectionist view of the big players here and they have all the answers and they're very important players but not the only players and how do you guard against this shutting out little Tech in this process Amen to that uh so let's take a look at Europe I mean uh one of the things I always ask my students or or crowds that I talk to about AI policy or technology policy is I say name me a leading digital technology innovator headquartered in European union today silence right that has everything to do with getting policy wrong and what European Union is doing right now the only thing they're exporting on the digital technology front is regulation and basically that's all they've got left and they're trying to regulate mostly large American tech companies and so what's ironic about their regulatory regime is it was meant to sort of like keep things more in check and competitive but there's only a handful of large technology companies that can comply with those rules and regulations we don't want that to happen in the United States we have thousands upon thousands of small entrepreneurial uh companies starting up in the AI space right now and this is the Hope for the future especially open source technology you know right here in America that's happening on the ground we have got to preserve that entrepreneurial you know freedom to innovate kind of model for the United States so we don't become the Innovation backw water that is the European Union thank you thank you thank you very much thanks for doing this important hearing and thank you to our Witnesses um I come from a state that believes in Innovation we brought the world everything from the uh pacemaker to the Post-it note um and um I also think that we have to get ahead of this uh in a good way we have to put guard rails in place uh that's something that we really didn't do with tech policy and now there are all kinds of issues with privacy and not going to go into everything that we need to do um that I hope we can do do differently with AI and I think David Brooks the columnist put it best when he said the people in AI seem to be experiencing radically different brain States all at once I found it incredibly hard to write about because it is literally unknowable whether this technology is leading us to heaven or hell um we need guard rails that acknowledge that both are possible so I'll start out with Senator th and I uh serve on the Commerce Committee and we've introduced legislation uh that has gotten some positive feedback the AI research Innovation and accountability act to increase transparency and accountability for non-defense applications um and sort of differentiating between some of the riskier applications like electric grids um and then others and directing the NIS the Commerce Department to issue standards for critical impact systems um so I guess I'll start with you U Mr the um the bill that I just mentioned takes a risk-based approach that recognizes different levels of regulation are appropriate for different uses of AI do you agree that a risk-based approach to regulation is a good way uh to put in place some guard rails yeah absolutely I wrote a paper about your bill Senator and I maybe I know that it's a kind of a softball beginning yes well I I love building on the NIS framework right because that that exists and it was a multi-stakeholder widely agreed two set of principles for AI risk management and so it's really good to utilize the sort of existing sort of regulatory infrastructure we already have and building on that first MH very good do you want to add something Dr Howard I also noticed that your testimony emphasized the importance of AI literacy training and we actually in that bill uh direct the Commerce Department uh to develop ways of educating consumers that this has got to be part of anything including the work that Senator Heinrich our um our leader here as well as Senator Schumer and Senator and uh Senators rounds and Young have done uh for the bigger uh base uh Bill and that we hope to be part of do you want to talk about literacy a bit Yeah I think even if you think about uh doing policy right you have to have individuals understand that definition of right and if you don't understand Ai and both the opportunities and the risks there's no way that you can think about great policy um and so when I think about this it's not just computer scientists and Engineers it's everyone that's touching any type of Technology should understand how to define it understand data understand parameters understand outcomes understand what the impacts are on different markets different populations and so that's really important do you want to add anything Dr guarda you know I think that there is the importance of the risk framework there is also research that needs to be done to give us the technical underpinning right trust is something that a human conveys but we are still in the early stages of doing research to understand what makes a model trustworthy when does it respond within the bounds of our data what where is it reliable where is it not and so I think you know policy just needs to keep in mind where we are heading and what the technical basis is at any given point in time because the technology to understand the trustworthiness the mathematical underpinings is something the National Labs have researched for a long time and is moving quickly very good um one of the things that um I'm like hair on fire moment is just because I chair the rules committee is the Democracy piece of this um and I guess I'll ask you this isn't the subject really we're talking about Innovation but if our democracy is uh unstable because people don't know if it's the candidate they love or the candidate they don't like that are speaking because you can't tell um it is just something that we have to think about in terms of uh going forward as a nation something like over 15 states now have required um bans or disclosures on deep fake ad Center Holly and I as well as um Senator Collins and Coons and many others have put together a bill on actually Banning defects with exceptions for satire and the like s Makowski and I have the bill that we lead on disclaimers and um I'm just really worried with Federal elections that while states are doing things with which is good we don't preempt them and uh State ads uh that we um have to guard rail our democracy here so people know who are they are hearing from and I often get worried that some little disclaimer at the end no one's going to really notice do you want to answer that uh that is true it's just like with consent forms nobody actually reads them um and so one of the things is how do we provide individuals or how do we provide some transparency and Trust on the information they're hearing because we know it's very easy to manipulate individuals with advertisement in media um and so if those advertisements in media are very very real or associated with a candidate that people resonate with or don't um that will influence them guaranteed 100% MH and Dr Miller I think I'm out of time but I'll I'll put a question in writing to you on um Tech hubs I know that you know a lot about this kind of uh your testimony is on the importance of policies that promote development of new science and new innovation we have a lot of medical device in Minnesota and it's served our country well and I uh just want to talk a little bit about that in Tech hubs and you can do it in writing unless you want to add something in the chair will let me ask you that is that okay do you want to add anything on that yeah uh I guess um one thought I think with tech hubs and also just Tech Innovation is we often don't realize that the current status of purely human-driven care is actually frequently low quality and often highly unsafe and so promoting Innovation at universities at small companies that change that and automate components of care delivery or assist nurses doctors pharmacists whomever in making decisions will actually massively raise the quality and safety and efficiency of care and I'd add I would say my greatest fear is actually that we don't take advantage of this opportunity because the care delivery system is a mess yeah that's where you go to heaven or hell we got to make sure we got it right all right thank you very much Dr Miller thank you all and and Senator that was a terrific question it's sort of the um we sometimes have are emotionally tied and sometimes the disruption of the technology makes us nervous but the math is the math um you know we've seen a number of papers that talk about some of the ability for the AI to read the data coming off my watch or the wearable or the glucose meter or the thing you blow into um and being able to analyze that data actually is remarkably good and statistically much more accurate then you know someone that went to Postgraduate School for what nine years and I'm and I feel crappy saying that because I can't imagine what your student debt is um uh and on that not on that not thank you Senator um and and and Congressman berer was actually and he and I were sort of channeling each other um where I'm trying to get is a a model where um AI makes traffic better where AI helps me attach in air quality monitor these things and we crowdsource our environmental data um where AI is B and and I accept some of that becomes an technically an algorithm underlying it's actually not you know crawling through a stack um but but even where um Congressman berer was the the ability to revolutionize the cost and delivery and efficacy of Healthcare of of what was about 3 weeks ago a month ago we had one of the first drugs solely designed by AI a new molecule that looks like it has a remarkable efficacy um how do I get this to move fast because I believe cures are moral and um it's an interesting you you is the solution and environment as you and I think about policy is it Tak taking a look at the outcomes and making sure those outcomes are effective in some ways moral efficient um because if we don't do something fairly dramatically on the cost of delivering Services I mean yesterday we borrowed $101,000 per second over the last 366 days it's a leap year um you know if I had come to you a few years ago and said we're going to be over $100,000 a second in borrowing and almost all the growth of borrowing is interest interest now will be number two in our our spending stack and the growth of healthcare I you am I am I channeling you appropriately holy very much so it's just terrifying to think that interest on the debt is greater than Medicare greater than Medicaid greater than the defense budget only has to catch up with is is disc on defense yeah just Social Security and Social Security yeah so as I come to all of you you have the ginormous computers and lots of technical data that is not public um you have the Next Generation students you have the policy and you have the case of how we could revolutionize Healthcare how do I deal with the fact that when he and I have actually had conversations of tella Health you know digital Health the fact of the matter is in many ways you know this cuz you sat and we talked about it um if the pandemic H hadn't happened I don't know if I would have ever gotten our tella Health Bill a single hearing it only moved for and because apparently grandma wouldn't know how to work FaceTime turns out she's really good at it um I don't believe the next generation is talking to someone on the phone I think it's reading the data off my body how do I sell this story Dr Miller how do how do we sell the morality of doing it better faster cheaper and much more accurately I think it's immoral not to to do that right so if we don't give patients the choice of having cheaper more efficient more accessible more personalized care I think that we would be making a massive moral error you mentioned tell Health 20 years ago you know if we talked about tell Health people would say that uh we were cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs right because no one's going to call their doctor or do Skype or FaceTime and now it's the standard and took a global pandemic where a million Americans died for us to have tell health so I think the answer is is one hopefully we don't have another Global pandemic but we don't want to wait until there's some catastrophic event until we offer automated or autonomous care right if you're a poor American with chronic disease autonomous and automated care or AI assisted care is basically the best thing ever because you will get more access it'll get higher quality and it's going to be cheaper so I I personally think that we have to do it it's not a choice Mr the and and as you I know you're going to respond to that does it make a difference in our world um that what was it three weeks ago Apple finally got its next Generation a watch to for cardiac arhythmia those things um substantially certified as a medical device is that what you were talking about of the Next Generation disruption is coming yeah absolutely and to answer your question Congressman about how we essentially sell these benefits we talk about it in terms of opportunity costs like what would we be losing so what kind of foregone Innovation would we lose if we don't get this right well we can put our numbers on this let's talk about some of the biggest killers in America today 800,000 people lose their lives to heart disease 600,000 people use their their lives to cancers every year now I mean how about how about cars let's talk about public health and vehicles I mean every single day there's 6,500 people injured on the roads in America 100 of them die 94% of those are attributable to human error behind the wheel I have to believe that if we had more autonomy in automobile sector we could actually make a dent excuse the pun in that death toll yeah and so I mean this is where we can talk to the public about like the real world tradeoffs at work if we get this wrong right I mean we've had a 50-year war on cancer that goes back to the time when when Richard Nixon was in office and you know we've made some strides but we could make a lot more if we had serious robust technological change to bring to bear on this through the form of computation and Alworth Nick learning I mean this is where we can make the most difference Mr Vice chairman if I can wander for just 30 seconds I was waiting for you to step in okay you were a little slow in the upate well I'm just I just wanted to help me stay on message but if I can go off message for a minute I wanted to respond to one of the things that Senator Schmidt said about licensing uh my dear friend Tom wheeler who chaired the FCC a Democrat um and clearly a left a senator Democrat had called to tell me how important it was not to use Licensing in AI that when we did that all we were doing was essentially embracing anti-competitive and locking in the advantage of the incumbents and we need to be very careful about that um Senator Schmidt also started with two minutes on China uh I also want to quote Martin wolf who was the editor-in chief of Financial Times saying please don't give up that 20 years of liberalization is too soon to tell that sooner or later the the state motto of Virginia six Emperor on us sooner or later the Chinese people are going to rise up now we need to be worried about the Chinese Communist party not the Chinese people uh that they will be demanding freedom um sooner hopefully rather than later and Dr Howard um I have two brunonian children so it's wonderful to have you here and I really appreciate your service on the national AI advisory Council I mean you really set the stage for the the big uh executive order and all that um but I'm specifically interested in your emphasis on digital literacy we've been looking what Finland has done um with the the the multi-hour training in digital literacy as we struggle with deep fakes which are now coming more and more uh that we you start with the notion that we need to be teaching people what to be suspicious of and and let their own instincts kick in but how how can we develop digital literacy in a much more robust way than what we've done so far so I think this is an area where you have to bring in academics industry organizations nonprofits and government um I think about it very similar to cyber security Now days people actually check to make sure is is this really spam I'm not going to click the link but I will tell you five years ago everyone was clicking and so how do you get people to be aware that this is an issue half of the Americans have no clue that you know there might be a fake it might be manipulation advertisement might be by a chatbot I and so really is is ensuring that we have this conglomeration of everyone thinking about how do we train within the organization outside the organization from K to 12 to gray yeah thank you very much but D David I also before yielding back to you because you didn't turn my my uh I was going to this is a conversation we're doing almost a cqu question mark well in a cqu thing I want to thank you for bringing also stalling because I have another member coming so keep going want to thank you for getting the joint economic committee to focus on the challenges of diabetes and endstage renal disease we had the this the same type hearing a few months ago and we we've both been worried about uh the cost of dialysis it took Mitch Daniels former om director Etc to do the math while we were sitting here and say 31% of our Medicare budget right now is just dialysis think think about what the he just said 31% is Medicare 33% is all Healthcare is functioning diabetes $260 billion doll a year and now we have glp1 antagonist we have Solutions um not inexpensive but so far can you help me do some things on the farm bill oh absolutely everything we can but this when we look at how to deal with $100,000 a second yeah um and how we make the 19 18% of GDP on Healthcare trim down and not just gop1 but many other ways that we think about using technology and Ai and better management to manage healthc care in America yeah Dr Howard um I I just just to stick in the back of your head and it's a slight non seiters you were talking about teaching people technology literacy um what's our only success functioning the last decade of getting Americans to actually exercise we've spent hundreds of billions this is somewhat of a trick question and he may he already knows the answer um it was gamification it was Pokemon go I know that sounds absurd but if you actually look at the data Pokémon go did more to get people out chasing the little and we've often had this running discussion what would happen if that type of Technology saying here's how I train you how to understand how to work chat GPT the gamification of even down to health care and maintaining if um drug adherence is 16% of all us healthare when I forget to take my stat and when I don't do those things how do I make it so my pill bottle cap beeps at me or those sorts of things that there are solutions that are genuinely ahead of us and we're actually struggling saying is there unified theory of the ability to use this technology disruption when I call the IRS the person I'm talking to is actually a chat GPT but it stays on the phone with me and it helps me fill out my forms and then maybe texts me the form I need instead of someone who's been dealing with crazy for seven hours and doesn't really want to be on the phone with me um and that's actually going on right now and so far the early data of the IRS experiment of using a chatbot has been apparently really good that's human so if it be from the cures to the education to the you know miracles of producing new um materials and and we're trying to help us sort of build the the argument that you know many of us aren't that bright but we get to sit here and um read things that smart people write for us but how do we create a unified theory of let the technology run because God forbid none of us truly know what it's going to look like a few years from now I me am I Mr chairman will you yield for question I thought you were going to tell us it was pickle ball rather than you know I don't like you anymore I tried one pickle ball and my eight-year-old beat me um I mean could could I just uh wholeheartedly endorse what Dr Howard had to say about uh digital literacy AI literacy because this is really important first of all representative Rochester has a really nice bill on on uh digital AI literacy that I think we should take a look at that's really good stuff um and when we talk about this you know AI literacy digital literacy we're talking about you know Learning for Life you know no matter what kind of punches come at us we can roll with those punches and figure out how to adapt when we know more about the technology it's about building resiliency societal and individual resiliency and you know people sometimes laugh at this I was on a uh I was a co-chair of an Obama administration online Safety and Security task force where like the only thing anybody in the room could agreee on was the importance of digital etiquette and literacy uh so there's a lot of agreement on this this is a good place to start it's a good foundation for building that resiliency um and some people say well that's not enough okay fine we'll find other remedies but it can go a long way you know I'm old enough to remember the problems we had in this country with littering and forest fires back in the 60s and 70s and I remember well I'm sure some of you up there too as well that you know give AO don't pollute we address that right we we went after woodsy you know Woods of the owl and things like that would Smokey the Bear and forest fires we we made a huge difference just with societal education about the problems of littering and forest fires right that wasn't a law that passed that that was actual societal learning it was wrong to throw things out your window of your car right so you apply that mentality to the world of like digital and AI policy and we talk about again AI etiquette netiquette if you will like proper behavior using algorithmic services and Technologies using llms using you know these systems I I want to go and actually I I also want Mr Byer to comment on this and you know you teach students you already have you have to deal with lots of freaky smart people most of them bathe I assume um that's actually really funny if you know some of her scientists um how do I deal with my brothers and sisters here who aren't Don buer who are almost fearful of Technology um I mean you know what do we do to take away I mean I I swear they they they instantly think of a Terminator movie I mean what do you do I mean in healthcare I can't tell you the I'm G to forgive my elegance and my language the crap I take when I basically say the same things you have at forums of my here's my healthare cost here's things we could do to disrupt it using technology and I will get administrators and this and that that come and say well we can't do that it might be against our state law so technology allows us to operate at a higher level I have a terrible sense of direction right so I use Google Maps and Uber and lift to get places I don't pick up a rotary phone and call my friends to ask for directions and write them down on a notepad right that the norm after you look it up in the phone book right yeah I don't even have a don't even have a phone book in the house anymore and you know my iPhone organizes my calendar and email and tells me where to go and what to do because I'm a little absent-minded and that's the the standard like that's the standard of my day and I think if we make that analogy over to healthcare where right now we have the rotary phone and we actually single-handedly keep the fax machine Lobby employed um we have an opportunity to totally transform that so the the clinical example is like if your blood pressure is really low and you have septic shock and you're going to the ICU and you're getting pressors have to stick some big IV in your neck uh 30 years ago if they they did that they just look at an tomical landmarks and put the put the IV in and and hope that you know they didn't H your crowed artery which would be bad now you use ultrasound you do ultrasound guided you have a little probe and you take a look and if you try to do it the other way the nurse would R run screaming into the room telling you that you're about to be negligent and doing something bad and the anal the the answer here is is that technology will allow us to do a safer more effective job it will become the standard and at some point to not use technology will be negligent you get the last um well first of all on your comment on gamification I wanted to show you David that I'm on day 643 on duo lingo I'm so proud of you uh and that's only because of gamification and but but but it makes my point ring at 11:30 at night if I forgot to do it so oh so that's what I want from pill bottle caps when you don't take your Staten right and Dr garoso um I was very impressed with all that you your testimony but especially the notion that scientific machine learning Sandy is fusing machine learning with scientific principle to solve scientific and Engineering problems um for me that is maybe the most exciting part of AI not not chat GPT four or five or six or seven but the notion that everything from Fusion Energy to how our bi ology Works etc etc that you can use machine learning the P the predictive parts of AI to figure things out can can you expand on that as a scientist I would love to thank you for the question you know I think to me this is this is the really exciting potential right I mean chat GPT has shown us how it can change our daily interactions and you know I was able to put my written testimony into our internal chat engine and ask it if it was you know helping me make it a little less Technical and more General and it was great for providing me with a first draft and editing but that's just been trained on the Corpus of knowledge that's in the internet I think what I get really excited about is the transformative potential of training models on science data so that I have my chemist intern with me that can help me discover new science properties that can then help me think through the physics and thermal and mechanical stresses to design a part that can be be manufactured today right we can just go from a new material to something that can be in our hands and usable and transform not just how we do medicine and how we interact with patients but how we make things in the country and so AI has the potential if we do it and we constrain it with science so that these concepts of hallucination and statistically guessing what the next answer should be based on what is learned we can constrain that with physics and chemistry and science data we can then do new manufacturing we can make digital twins of the human body to take the drug Discovery from decades down to months maybe a 100 days for the next vaccine buer anything follow um no but I'm I'm so glad that you're doing that and I I one of the things we don't talk about much is um as some of you ran a small business for many many years the notion that one of the most important Technologies is management um we don't tend to think of it that way but the way we can the way we can explore the use of artificial intelligence to make management much better and management decisions much better once again to the issue of making our world much more efficient dealing with $100,000 per second that we borrow and if we're lucky we'll replace members of congress with something intelligent never mind um or raise our pay and they've called votes on for us on the house side so um can I can I ask one more question then will it be short yeah yeah you sure I'm positive okay Dr Howard you you started zy robotics um and you also made what's it say um stem tools and learning games for children with diverse learning needs yes um I I'd love you know the the chair of our AI task force um J MC overaly Dr overaly machine learning masters from Caltech so sort of a smart guy um and he made his fortune in in video games um I'd love love to get your insight into how we use gaming um to help educate people um on not just artificial intelligence but on everything else in the Science World well with cobotics I could get five-year-olds to learn how to code through gamification and so and it really is is how do you provide small nuggets based on someone's knowledge engaging with them and bring them along scaffold them along to at the end they're like oh I'm actually putting Cod together to do simple things for a 5-year-old um I think that could be done with adults as well I'd love to work with you I have a couple of ideas which which we go offline with but but David thank you so much Mr chairman and he knows that's actually one of my fixations so you're there's a reason I like you um thank you for engaging in this hearing with us um you be prepared you have we're going to for three days we may ask you questions I am going to ask also to do something something a little bit different for the public record if you have articles that you think would be appropriate for us to try to absorb in reality we're going to make our staff read it and then give us the highlighted copy um please send it our Direction and with that we're off to votes this hearing is Jed thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e

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Id: 13x4RlMp8VU

Length: 90min 0sec (5400 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024