At least two branches of government are hell-bent on artificial intelligence
"Leaders are talking, as they often do, even when the chambers aren't meeting, about what they want to do at the end of the year," said Loren Duggan.
With less than two weeks before the election, the White House released a national security memorandum on artificial intelligence. Lots of provisions for keeping the U.S. at the forefront of safe and ethical AI. Bloomberg Government deputy news director Loren Duggan joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin on this and a few things happening on Capitol Hill.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin And Loren, I guess there’s congressional activity on the AI front also that you’ve been reporting.
Loren Duggan Yeah, we have been. Leaders are talking, as they often do, even when the chambers aren’t meeting, about what they want to do at the end of the year. And one thing they’re talking about is an artificial intelligence package that might hitch a ride on something else, but really focused on R&D aspects of AI and also guidelines for how to use the technology. This has been talked about all year and there’s been working groups and hearings and they brought industry players in to talk about it, but we haven’t really seen much in the way of true legislating around this. So, you know, if they could come to a bicameral, it would have to be right now, bipartisan agreement. That could be something we see happening at the end of the year. There’s clearly a lot of interest in A.I., as you mentioned, with the White House plan. But this would be a way for the current Congress to still put a stamp on this before the end of the year.
Tom Temin And when you think about AI, there are provisions the government would like for industry and for the chip industry and so forth. And I guess also they would be keeping an eye in oversight capacity on how federal agencies deploy AI and that branches off into a lot of different things. Is your sense that Congress is looking at both sides?
Loren Duggan Yeah, I don’t know if this will have the deepest parts of the regulation in it, but, certainly, are there areas of research and development where they could put some money behind it or put some guidelines around maybe some of the safe and ethical use, things that the administration also touched on. But those are some of the big questions. How do you how do you harness this technology but not deploy it in a way that can be harmful to whether it’s people’s jobs or things like that? There are a lot of areas they’ve talked about. So if they are going to get something done, it might be the easiest stuff to agree on first and maybe other things will get punted. But we’ll have to see what they can do when they come back and what shape that might take.
Tom Temin And who’s talking about it on the Hill? Is this some type of obscure thing for a low ranking member or is the leadership thinking about it?
Loren Duggan This is really at the leadership level. So the top level, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y), the Senate majority leader, a Democrat, has been at the forefront of this. He’s one of the main players in their working group and he’s talked to [Sen.] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), as we understand it, with both Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in the House. So this is pretty high up and maybe the details will be worked out by other people. But leadership buy in and leadership pressure will probably, if it is going to happen, give it the impetus it needs.
Tom Temin Yeah. So maybe they’re both hoping that artificial intelligence will win the next election and something instead of the candidates everyone’s looking at here these days. And meantime, the White House had its take on artificial intelligence, putting it in the national security flavor.
Loren Duggan That’s right. They put out a strategy for the military use of AI. And this is something that the Biden administration is going to take to a broader meeting that’s happening next month. And what’s important here is the agencies, they want to focus on this and some of the safeguards they want to put around it. So, you know, when the military, if it’s going to use AI, how they’re going to track or identify individuals for either military or law enforcement, determine somebody’s immigration classification. So very sensitive stuff when it comes to how the military and other agencies use AI. The future of this, obviously, this is a Biden administration proposal. Either outcome on November 5th, you’re going to have either a Trump administration or a Harris administration. Maybe the Harris administration would pull this forward, but we could see changes to it under Donald Trump. But it is a pretty significant document. And certainly going to global talks with this sort of perspective will be pretty important.
Tom Temin Yeah, it says from the White House, their summary says this memo directs the U.S. government to collaborate with allies and partners to establish a stable, responsible and rights respecting governance framework. So it sounds like they do want to take it overseas.
Loren Duggan Yeah, they do. And they want to, like you said, work with allies because obviously there are adversaries out here and we want to make sure. I think they also said that we have to be faster in deploying A.I. than our adversaries are and making sure that we ward off theft and ward off opportunities to steal things that U.S. industry is doing to advance artificial intelligence. And likewise, it’s telling the military’s acquisition personnel to talk to industry, talk to defense companies, talk to investors even about what they need to think about when it comes to AI capabilities and build that into the way the government might procure it. So this is a pretty wide ranging document that could be very significant in how the government works in this space.
Tom Temin We are speaking with Loren Duggan. He is deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And meanwhile, on the Hill, it’s sort of dark and deserted, but it’s sort of not at the same time.
Loren Duggan It’s not; staff are still there unless they took maybe a leave and went to campaign for their boss or for the party somewhere in the country. But really, there’s got to be focus pretty soon on what happens after the November 5th election because the lame duck session starts November 12th, just one week later. And there are a lot of things that they could do in addition to AI, like government funding, which has to be resolved before December 20th. Defense Authorization. Farm Bill. Many issues that haven’t been dealt with so far this year that a lame duck Congress may have to grapple with before they head out the door.
Tom Temin With all of these budget talks, there is waxing and waning of people’s desire to get back on to this, depending on which side they think will win the election, which kind of figures into the calculus, I guess.
Loren Duggan Right. Scenario planning. If you talk to people around town, many people are doing that because they’re trying to figure out, okay, what if this combination wins or that combination? So when it comes to government funding, as we know, the House Republicans initial offer was to kick this into next year. The version that they signed into law to provide stopgap funding is only through December 20th. If there is a Trump victory on November 5th, or the days after, you could see maybe pressure to hold this off till next year and have him deal with it, especially if Republicans have one or both houses. If Democrats win some combination thereof, there could be different pressure to wrap this up and not leave it for next year because a new Congress and a new majority may not want to have to have its first order of business funding the entire government so the outcome is really going to say a lot about what they get done in the lame duck on government funding.
Tom Temin And since there is going to be a different president, it’s unlikely, isn’t it, in general that a new administration has much to say over the budget it gets for that year that it comes into office anyway because so much of the die is already cast. They argue around the fringes.
Loren Duggan So they might have question one: What is government funding this year if it’s not resolved if they get sworn in on January 20th. But then some work has been done by the administration before you to lay the groundwork and start the process of giving [the Office of Management and Budget] some numbers. But you’re going to want to put some stamp. So budgets requests always come out late when there’s a new president. That undoubtedly will be the case next year, again, no matter if it’s Harris or Trump. But we’ll see how long it takes for them to get their footing and really impose their vision of government on the budget, which is itself a governing vision, in a way.
Tom Temin Sure. It’s what they say: A budget is an expression of values in some sense. But with the state of the way the government does the budgeting, the 2026 stuff is already well in the works. And as you point out, the ’26 proposal ordinarily would come out about a month after inauguration. In this case, that’s very unlikely to happen no matter who gets the White House.
Loren Duggan Correct. And even the 25 budget requests came out in March instead of February. So that was late in a fairly typical year. And typical now means the budget’s late anyhow, maybe going into the the next calendar year. So there is work underway. But again, a new administration might not want to take everything that their predecessor has done. So that could help slow it down as well. And having a baseline, having a fiscal 2025 number is often important to know. We want to show what direction we’re growing or reducing the size of government in, so that that could factor in as well.
Tom Temin And there’s also the factor that whichever side, again, comes into the White House, there’s going to be wholesale replacements of all of the appointed officials. And that takes a lot of at least senatorial bandwidth, too, doesn’t it?
Loren Duggan It does. And it may depend on what the party of the White House and what the party of the Senate are. And if they’re different, that will slow it down more. But putting your stamp on a new administration is important. And even if Vice President Harris were to become president, not everyone would stay around. Maybe some people would continue in. But there’s already vacancies at a couple of departments. We have an acting Labor secretary and acting [Housing and Urban Development] secretary. Will there be a push to replace them and what sort of Senate would she face if she wins? If it’s a Republican Senate, it might be harder to get some of her picks through. So that could take a good amount of time in the Senate to confirm all those nominees.
Tom Temin Although if she does get in, then some of the cabinet members might stay around from the Biden administration just because it is continuity in a large sense until the new person is confirmed.
Loren Duggan Absolutely, they won’t feel the same pressure to depart immediately, that perhaps if there’s a change in party where people often do leave right away.
Tom Temin Yeah, if Trump gets in there, I’m sure, say, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is not going to stick around for very long, if at all.
Loren Duggan Indeed, I think many of them will depart the 19th of January, 20th of January, most likely in that event.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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