White House Adviser Arati Prabhakar Discusses AI, Climate Change and Promoting Health

January 16, 2025

Authored by:

B.L. Wilson

As President Joe Biden's director of the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, Arati Prabhakar discussed the administration's accomplishments and what lies ahead in health, climate change and artificial intelligence at an event Tuesday evening at the George Washington University.

The talk, "A Better Tomorrow: Science and Technology's Essential Purpose," was Prabhakar's last public event in her White House role. "It seems somehow fitting that I get to do it right here next door at GW," she said.

GW President Ellen M. Granberg described Prabhakar as a longtime friend whose "connection is like the start of a Bollywood movie, because I'm her mother's sister's son's wife's sister." Granberg noted that Prabhakar has been an amazing friend to her and her wife, Sonya.

Granberg introduced Prabhakar as a trained engineer, a venture capitalist and an applied physicist "dedicated to supporting, investing in and creating infrastructure so that world-class engineers and scientists can create new technologies and businesses that will lead us on to a greater world." She described her friend as a person who "deeply understands that the problems of the world where science and technology are critical parts of the solution" also require "the social sciences and the humanities pulling together to solve our tough problems."

Prabhakar began the talk in Jack Morton Auditorium by contrasting postcards of different futures that lie before the country in which a child may grow up poor with a shortened life expectancy and few friends because "he's fallen deeper into an online world" and "vaccination rates are already below herd immunity."

"Today three dozen countries have longer life spans than we do here in the United States, which is completely unacceptable in the richest country in the world," Prabhakar said.

She compared that to a future where a child grows up running, jumping and playing and where there may be an occasional disease outbreak but no pandemics and "people are actually able to take care of themselves…go about their lives and take robust health for granted."

She lauded the Cancer Moonshot initiative undertaken by Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. The effort has shown what is possible by focusing on prevention, treatment and innovative research to "change the course of cancer, to end cancer as we know it," she said. "The impact of this work is going to be felt for decades."

She mentioned a few highlights of the initiative: removing lead pipes around the country to eliminate polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the water; using previous research to decrease nicotine levels in cigarettes, which still contribute to 30% of cancer deaths; expanding early screening and critical detection to "nip cancer in the bud"; and pushing insurance companies to reimburse for patient navigation services to assist families going through cancer treatment.

GW President Granberg (l) was in conversation with her longtime friend, Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy. (William Atkins/GW Today).

Prabhakar noted that the Biden administration has been taking "the most significant actions that anyone anywhere has ever taken" on clean energy, resilience and conservation through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Those two laws, she said, are "deploying clean energy at a rate we have never seen before."

"When we do this work on climate and nature," she continued, "it is anchored in the understanding that this work is integral to our security, to our economy, our health, it is integral to equity across our society. What that means is that as we take these actions, companies are creating good-paying jobs, we're mitigating health risks."

Shifting to artificial intelligence, Prabhakar warned that the technology has the potential to create a dark future if it becomes embedded in discriminatory policies and bias in housing, lending, criminal justice and health care. She said every click is surveilled, rampant fraud leads to distrust, and there is no privacy or protection from the prying eyes of government in the United States and in other countries.

The administration has already taken several steps, she said, to manage AI's risks. Banks that use algorithms to process loan and mortgage applications are now required to explain why an application is turned down. Health care providers are required to ensure that AI systems that provide diagnoses are not culling discriminatory choices that could harm patients. A new Federal Trade Commission regulation makes it illegal to use AI to impersonate a business, a bank or an agency to defraud consumers.

"If we can get it right, we can get those efficiency gains without eroding the core values that we have as a society," she said. "If we can get it right, AI can also help us embrace and work through the complexities that we face in every domain."

Using AI, it is possible, she said, to imagine a future when the technology can be used to design and improve drugs for seemingly intractable diseases, not in decades but in months. Education tools can start closing educational gaps. Weather forecasts will be more accurate.

She then sat down for an energetic exchange with Granberg on her vision of the next steps for integrating science, technology, the social sciences and humanities and what students can do as they begin looking forward to their own careers.

Granberg noted Prabhakar's broad, varied experience. "You have been successful in so many different areas," Granberg said. "You've been a venture capitalist, an executive, a policy analyst advising presidents. You've run enormous organizations."

"What's the secret?"

Prabhakarsaid finding and working with "great people" is key.

"Meld them together and do things that are bigger than one person," she said. "Then, all is possible. That is where I get a lot of joy and what I've gotten to do in so many organizations I've worked in. That has been a great privilege to me."