White House congratulates itself for catching AI bug

President Trump is set to sign several bills into law, each of which aims to stimulate US ambitions in future technologies and productivity.

While the lion’s share of the attention will be directed towards artificial intelligence, there are other bills which have been slipped in including advanced manufacturing and Quantum Information Science. One of the more important groups which is emerging from this announcement, the National Council for the American Worker, is perhaps the one which will get most over-looked though.

“I am eager to work with you on legislation to deliver new and important infrastructure investment, including investments in the cutting-edge industries of the future,” Trump said in a White House statement. “This is not an option. This is a necessity.”

Focusing on the National Council for the American Worker for the moment, this is an area where the US could genuinely prove itself to be forward-looking, instead of focusing on aging buzzwords.

The top-line aim for the Council will be to craft the masses to ensure they are suitably qualified and positioned to reap the benefits of tomorrow’s society. This means investigating how curriculums can be altered to ensure the right skills are being offered to young people, but also awareness campaigns to generate an understanding of what will be required of young people in the world of tomorrow.

What is less clear is the impact on the people of today. This is not directly covered in the press jargon, though there is an objective for the Council to work with the private sector to ensure the skills chasm is reduced. The White House has not said it directly, though this is pretty much as close as any government has come to recognising technologies such as AI are not going to be beneficial to everyone in today’s society.

Government rhetoric surround AI has been pretty consistent around the world. Firstly, AI will create wonderful products and services for consumers, and secondly, it will make businesses more profitable, creating new job opportunities. This might be true, but no-one has recognised there is going to be pain.

People will be made redundant. Jobs will be lost to software, automation and consolidation. Some people will not be suitable candidates for the newly created roles. These scenarios are utterly unavoidable. Unless government recognise this pain, nothing can be done to adapt to it. If nothing is done, there will be elements of society who will be left behind, qualified for roles which no longer exist. Governments have to wake up and be mature.

Elsewhere the President has unveiled a National Strategic Plan on Advanced Manufacturing and has also signed the National Quantum Initiative Act into law. Quantum Information Science is an area which seemingly fits perfectly into the Silicon Valley mould, looping back around to the semiconductor revolution which spurring the region into action decades ago. With 5G on the horizon encouraging exceptional growth in computing power, this is a segment which will almost prove critical in the future.

The framework is there for some potentially beneficial legislation, though we’ll see how this plays out. It could create a forward-looking landscape however it might just create a landscape which says its forward-looking.