Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week I interviewed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s director Arati Prabhakar, who’s led the Biden administration’s hyperactive response to the artificial intelligence boom. Prabhakar discussed the White House’s “human choices”-centric approach to regulating AI, the relationship between her career in tech policy and “Groundhog Day,” and why there’s still room for the administration to “go big” even after its sweeping executive order. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows.

What’s one underrated big idea?

If you look at the conversation that's happening about artificial intelligence today, almost all of the discussion is about AI as a technology. What I think is underrated is the fact that it's the human choices we're all making that will determine how this story turns out.

Human beings decide what AI systems to build, they choose the data to train AI, what to use AI models for, they choose what kind of agency to build into an AI system, and whether it can do things online or in the physical world. Every one of those is a choice that an individual or a company is making. That has to be more central in the conversation.

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

All technologies are overhyped. That's how we do this, we get excited about some new advancement and there’s a lot of hype and then we have to take it with a grain of salt again. That’s why the hype cycle curves are so accurate, it’s the nature of the business.

I was the program manager at DARPA in 1986, I had just started there. There was this phenomenal research breakthrough with high-temperature superconductors. They weren't yet room temperature superconductors, but it was a very big deal, and for a while people thought it was going to change everything. It turned out it changed a few things, and it was a real technical advance, but its implications weren't as huge as everyone initially thought.

What book most shaped your conception of the future?

I'm not sure there was one book, but there was a type of book that especially in my formative years I loved: books that were about time travel or, you know, someone who's in a “Groundhog Day” situation. The idea that a person is trapped living their life over until they get it right, and they try all these different ways of living and see what the consequences are, and what kind of a life it leads to, I found to be a great way to explore how people thought about what was important.

This is my third tour of public service. Twice I have left being deeply gratified to have gotten to do the things I've gotten to do, and I went home to California and never expected to come back. And twice I got a call out of the blue that did bring me back. Now I’ve been joking that I’m apparently on my third cycle, and I’m just going to keep doing this.

What could government be doing regarding technology that it isn’t?

This question is my day job. Right now, it is time to go big with AI. The president and vice president, I thought the clarity of their vision was really important — that a powerful technology like AI brings promise and peril, and our job isn't to pick one side but to start by managing the risks and getting the technology on a healthy track.

That's exactly what got done last year when the president and the vice president got voluntary commitments from AI companies for the first time ever, and engaged on a bipartisan basis with Congress on the legislation that we're going to need, and when the President signed a very significant AI executive order that addressed the dimensions of risk that AI brings. That global leadership resulted in the first-ever United Nations General Assembly Resolution on AI, that the U.S. proposed and that was co-sponsored by 122 countries.

Now it's time to write the next chapter about AI. We have huge aspirations right now, we have to boost American health outcomes that are not okay, we need better ways to educate every kid that comes through our K through 12 system, we've got to fully decarbonize our economy in a very short period of time. We need to be able to give better weather forecasts to people who are still going to be dealing with a changing climate. There’s a very long list of public missions that we need to harness AI for, and we’ve been cooking up some work on that, so watch this space.

What surprised you most this year?

I've been in this job about a year and a half, and over the course of the last year, I've been getting my head around the scale of what the president and vice president have gotten done and I'm not sure that the scale has really fully sunk in. We're rebuilding America's physical infrastructure, roads, bridges and internet access through the bipartisan infrastructure law on a scale that hasn't been done in decades; we've finally started making progress on the critical work of clean energy for decarbonization. The clean electricity announcements in the last year total the equivalent of 50 Hoover Dams. If you look at semiconductor manufacturing, Americans finally put a stake in the ground and we're going to have it back in the United States.

It was very visible to me that we have the research and the technological capabilities to build clean electricity, and to produce bleeding-edge semiconductors. R&D is enabling. But it doesn't automatically turn into the manufacturing and facilities and full scale deployment that, in the case of clean energy, changes climate outcomes. That is so gratifying to see, because every one of the examples I gave you is building on prior R&D, but implementing it at a scale that allows us to harvest the benefits of the investments that have been made over a long period.

the crypto campaign

Donald Trump is the first major presidential candidate to explicitly court the crypto world in his campaign.

POLITICO’s Jasper Goodman reported on the pitch for Pro subscribers this morning, as Trump told a group of crypto backers gathered at Mar-a-Lago Wednesday that they had “better vote” for him given the Biden administration’s regulatory crackdown on the technology. (The event was promoting Trump’s own NFT.)

Kristin Smith, CEO of the Blockchain Association, a top crypto industry lobbying group, said “President Trump’s remarks signal a sea change in the importance of digital assets this election cycle.”

Some Democrats are getting skittish about the issue: Pro-crypto North Carolina Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel wrote on X that “We cannot hand this issue to the Republicans. Digital assets shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” and said Washington should aim to “protect American consumers and keep blockchain and crypto innovation in the United States.”

lords of ai

A member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords is trying to get the nation’s first AI regulation on the books.

Today’s Morning Technology UK reported on the move from the Tory peer Chris Holmes, who introduced an Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill that would create an “AI Authority” with the power to coordinate the U.K.’s regulatory efforts, and impose disclosure and compliance regulations on developers.

The U.K.’s House of Commons isn’t required to take up bills introduced by the peerage, but MT UK reports that Holmes is hoping the bill’s overwhelming support in the House of Lords will convince them to do so.

Tweet of the Day

The Future in 5 links

• AI could help you make your next connecting flight.
• Duolingo is making a big bet on a generative AI-powered subscription plan.
• The Neuralink brain implant had a major technical setback.
• A controversial token launch snubbed both the U.S. and China.
• The energy needs of AI could make it a good fit for offshore wind farms.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson ([email protected]); Mohar Chatterjee ([email protected]); Steve Heuser ([email protected]); Nate Robson ([email protected]); Daniella Cheslow ([email protected]); and Christine Mui ([email protected]).

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