ICYMI: Kelly Discusses his New AI for America Roadmap in Expert-Filled Panel at Arizona State University

In case you missed it, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly hosted a panel at Arizona State University (ASU) today on the future of AI and his recently launched AI for America roadmap. Kelly was joined by ASU President Michael Crow, former Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, and former White House Chief Digital Officer and tech entrepreneur Jason Goldman.

The panel discussed the need for public-private partnerships as AI changes our economy, the energy demands it requires, the need to protect workers, and the innovation and opportunities on the horizon.

Watch the full conversation here. See key excerpts below:

"This is an incredible opportunity for our country and for the planet. Just think about the problems we could solve. […] If we're not thoughtful about it up front, we could make mistakes, and we could look back 10 years in the future and think, 'I wish we would've done XYZ.' That is the point of my paper: to put this out there for people, to consider this being a public-private partnership with companies investing in the future of work, investing in the infrastructure, and building an AI ecosystem that can benefit everybody," said Kelly, who participated virtually due to scheduled votes in Washington, D.C.

"This is a moment in time where we have a highly disruptive technology, artificial intelligence, which will be very significant in affecting job designs, job pathways, labor allocations […]. The tool itself can be unbelievably disruptive to work and labor […] but at the same time it's a tool that can be used to empower learning, to empower workers to do new things, to move in new directions. The tool itself has a dual existence. What we have to figure out is how we stay ahead of the wave of disruption and how do we use the tool to create a better set of outcomes than the present technological regime," said Crow.

"Part of the challenge here is […] because these are private actors, there are certain goals they are allowed to have, return on investment, and certain obligations that they maybe don't have to have as much. What I really love about the AI for America framework is that it really challenges that idea. It really says that for those companies that are helping to power this disruption, this phase of our country's innovative power, that they cannot just think about private return and they cannot just think of other costs as externalities. […] The question becomes why should public goods be completely upended by the needs of private companies without the private companies needing to play a bigger role," said Su.

"I very much agree with the point the senator made that we cannot repeat the same pattern that we saw in the social media era with the AI era. There are still harms we're trying to deal with from the social media era. We cannot blindly go into this new era that will be more disruptive than social media with no engagement from actors outside the industry," said Goldman.

Click here to watch the full conversation.

Read AI for America here.