From federal policymakers to agency implementers, we’ve heard a ton of talk about artificial intelligence (AI). But neither group has done nearly everything it said it wants to do to promote effective use of AI. That’s one takeaway from a new report card from the Information Technology Innovation Foundation. Hodan Omaar is a policy analyst who helped develop that report card for ITIF’s center for data innovation. She talked about some of the findings with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin…
Hodan Omaar: One of the things I found working in AI policy here in the United States is whenever you talk about AI policy, people are often speaking about very different things. So you know, some people could be talking about this new initiative to ensure that individuals in AI researcher have access to the compute they need. Many other people are talking about regulation, and if it’s right or wrong, and whether it should be closer to the EU or further away from the EU. Some people are talking about AI r&d. And so, the whole idea of the report was kind of to take a comprehensive view of U.S. AI policy at a high level for the United States. And really think about what U.S. AI policy means. I kind of chose the nine most prominent policies that the United States uses to kind of fuel AI innovation and competitiveness. And this report is really measuring the United States against itself. So if I say it’s approaching expectations, or it’s meeting expectations, it’s sort of the way that a report card would be for an individual child, you know, what is the potential for this individual? What is there a potential for in the United States? And how is it faring against what it could be doing? Rather than kind of comparing it against other countries, we’ve done other reports about the bottom line when it comes to the U.S. and how it’s doing in AI innovation and competitiveness looking at other countries saying, you know, the United States in general, when it comes to U.S. AI policy, we have a report out looking against the EU and China. And that report kind of says that the US is coming in first. This report, because it’s looking against the United States, its own potential against itself, the bottom line is kind of hard to say just because it varies so differently in those nine areas. Read the full interview here.
