Big tech companies are funneling money through a science nonprofit to help pay the salaries of AI staffers in Congress — and it’s just one example of the increasing influence outside-funded fellows are exerting on tech policy in Washington.
I mean, good. People who don’t know what TikTok is shouldn’t be blindly setting rules for the most important technology of our time.
The new “rapid response cohort” of congressional AI fellows is run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Washington-based nonprofit, with substantial support from Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, IBM and Nvidia, according to the AAAS. It comes on top of the network of AI fellows funded by Open Philanthropy, a group financed by billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz
Alongside the Open Philanthropy fellows — and hundreds of outside-funded fellows throughout the government, including many with links to the tech industry — the six AI staffers in the industry-funded rapid response cohort are helping shape how key players in Congress approach the debate over when and how to regulate AI, at a time when many Americans are deeply skeptical of the industry.
Hard to argue against literal subject-matter experts being in the room
Yes, though it’s a bit of the Noam Chomsky “you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair if you didn’t believe as you do.”
If we really wanted effective and less biased inputs on policy, the US government would select the people in the room based on peer ranked choice referrals from academics and industry experts on an individual basis, possibly with additional filtering to identify shared experts on lists from opposed perspectives (i.e. if Meta, Google, and academic experts all list someone as a good reference, it’s unlikely that person is going to simply be towing one line or the other on open vs closed model weight releases).
When corporate money drives who is in the room, even if the integrity of those in the room is paramount, the selection bias is inherently suspect.
I agree with every word except I think you can leave off the “-ly suspect”. The bias is inherent. Bias is inherent in all things political - perhaps in all humen endeavors. That doesn’t mean the result is necessarily corrupt, but it does mean folks need to think critically about what is said and the points of view represented and the outcome of these processes. Just like one should when watching the news.
I mean, good. People who don’t know what TikTok is shouldn’t be blindly setting rules for the most important technology of our time.
Hard to argue against literal subject-matter experts being in the room
Yes, though it’s a bit of the Noam Chomsky “you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair if you didn’t believe as you do.”
If we really wanted effective and less biased inputs on policy, the US government would select the people in the room based on peer ranked choice referrals from academics and industry experts on an individual basis, possibly with additional filtering to identify shared experts on lists from opposed perspectives (i.e. if Meta, Google, and academic experts all list someone as a good reference, it’s unlikely that person is going to simply be towing one line or the other on open vs closed model weight releases).
When corporate money drives who is in the room, even if the integrity of those in the room is paramount, the selection bias is inherently suspect.
I agree with every word except I think you can leave off the “-ly suspect”. The bias is inherent. Bias is inherent in all things political - perhaps in all humen endeavors. That doesn’t mean the result is necessarily corrupt, but it does mean folks need to think critically about what is said and the points of view represented and the outcome of these processes. Just like one should when watching the news.