Gov AI Annual report 2023

Centre for the Governance of AI Annual Report (2023)

I’m realizing my motivation to read and journal so much about AI safety is as equally motivated by wanting to be adaptive to emerging technologies as an engineering manager as well as being a concerned citizen. There can be this tacit belief that there is a fleet of really smart people out there who are asking all the right questions, and there definitely is, but there’s been such a long history of engineering leadership spaces that were not representive of the populace at large that I find it particularly compelling to look around documents like this annual report and ask myself if I would approach the subject matter differently. I’ve lived enough years to know that that I possess a unique perspective as a dual national transfemale person, yet how that plays out in AI governance is not something I fully have a framework for understanding. I’m curious, kind reader, why are you interested in AI governance?

The opening proclamation of “this past year was the most consequential year for AI governane yet”, resonates with everything I ready in 2023. I think the field is prepared for that to be the case year over year. I’m glad the UK has launched its first national AI Safety Institute, and hope we see other nations following suite and collaborating. “Policymakers around the world have, quite abruptly, awakened to the possibility that AI could have truly transformative effects”. I’ve yet to work in policy, but I imagine there is a large backlog, so when things get facetracked to the center of focus it can seem abrupt to the populace, but I imagine teams have been forecasting this moment for quite some time. “Many of the risks and benefits of AI remain uncertain”. This seems key. If you are in a room where you encounter this sentiment, go back to the thesis. What problems do we feel technology should be leveraged to solve?

For me it continues to come back to multidimensional optimization challenges, and I see these in multiple directions in health, although I typically anchor on preventable disease and the myriad signals from our daily lives that could be leveraged for early detection. Focussin AI on truly health-focussed health systems at scale seems like a great problem set, including how we can put the right safeguards in place so we don’t advance health disparities from our legacy systems in this new paradigm.

It was nice to see policymaker engagement in the US on the docket for this organisation’s 2024 goals, including the possibility of setting up a permanent team in DC. That’s exciting.