‘Fear and excitement’ are driving AI discourse in government

After two years of research into how states are using and thinking about AI, New America has published an expansive report that its creators say contains encouraging signs. Lilian Coral, vice president of New America’s technology and democracy programs, and Neil Kleiman, urban policy professor at Northeastern University’s public policy school, tell the Priorities Podcast that the implications of generative AI are far-reaching. Kleiman called the findings “remarkable.” “The other thing we were struck by was the politics around this,” he says. “Everybody is either excited or so freaked out about this technology that everybody is ready to do something.” Coral says she also hears fear and excitement emanating from government, but “what I was really encouraged by was the level of conversation that I could hear.”

This week’s top stories:

A repurposed IT system being used by the Department of Homeland Security presents “unacceptable risks” to the nation’s eligible voters, according to a group of secretaries of state who on Monday signed off on a letter opposing a recent proposal by the federal agency. The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program is subject to numerous legal changes under DHS’s proposal, including that it would be used not for its original narrow purpose, but allow bulk searches and searches of “individuals that are U.S. citizens by birth” to find ineligible voters and instances of voter fraud.

After numerous stalled attempts from the White House and Congress to preempt states from enforcing their artificial intelligence laws, yet another attempt is brewing in Congress, this time potentially bundling AI preemption with child online safety legislation. Doug Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, sent a letter to congressional leaders last week urging them to reject any such continued attempts at state AI law preemption, even one coupled with laws designed to protect kids. 

Two former committee chairs at the Association for Computing Machinery argue in a commentary piece for StateScoop that Congress must preserve state authority in AI governance. In the piece they argue that “AI’s impact is happening now, not in some distant future” and that states must be permitted to create and enforce their own laws as the need arises.

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