At today’s POLITICO AI & Tech Summit — still ongoing as we send this, and streaming live here — the biggest indicator of the sweeping effect artificial intelligence might have on society was the range of fields represented by Washington leaders onstage. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), speaking remotely to POLITICO’s Brendan Bordelon, put a finer point on it, describing how AI demands a response from each sector of government. “I think you're going to find artificial intelligence legislation embedded in almost every single piece of legislation that passes the House and the Senate in the coming years,” Rounds said. “Whether you're talking the Rules Committee, Homeland Security, whether you're talking Armed Services … all of them will have AI, or an AI focus, built into major pieces of legislation.” TOP OFFICIALS FROM the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, the National Economic Council and private industry all dropped by the Schuyler event space in downtown Washington for today’s summit. And with the first presidential election of the generative AI era a mere seven weeks away, much of their attention was turned to ensuring its security and trustworthiness. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told POLITICO’s Ankush Khardori that his department was locking in on instances of AI being used for the “dissemination of disinformation” specifically from overseas, with unnamed “adverse nation states propagating narratives that seek to influence the voting public.” Cait Conley, senior advisor to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, echoed his concern while speaking with POLITICO’s Maggie Miller, saying that old propaganda tactics could be “supercharged” by AI in November’s elections. “We do not believe generative AI is going to introduce fundamentally new risks to the cycle, but it is going to exacerbate some of the existing risks like disinformation to include malicious cyber tools, too,” she said. With the broad swath AI might cut through American life, the threat isn’t just to electoral politics, but the economy as well. Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, hyped up efforts from President Joe Biden’s administration to give labor a leg up by establishing protections against AI-driven displacement in workers’ contracts. “The Department of Labor has worked with labor organizations and business organizations to set out 10 best practices for the deployment of AI in the workforce, and one of the most important is worker voice, making sure that workers have in a systematic way the to weigh in on how AI is deployed,” Brainard noted, calling it an “important facet of some critical labor contracts.” In his closing comments, Sen. Rounds hinted once again that rather than one broad stroke, Congress’ approach to AI might look more like the efforts described by Brainard and Mayorkas within their agencies — studying the technology’s impact closely in any given area, and then responding accordingly piece by piece. “Within the appropriation bills you're going to find directions on AI development … health care is going to be a part of that, which long term will pay dividends for the taxpayer; a farm bill eventually is going to come out, and I think you're going to find items within the farm bill that will speak to the addition of AI,” Rounds said. “We've set this up so that it's not a one shot and then we're done — this is going to be an ongoing development for a technology that's not going to go away.”
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