Hello, and welcome back to The Future in 5 Questions. Today, we have Austin Carson — one of the organizers of the White House-endorsed AI red-teaming challenge happening this weekend at the DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. Carson is behind the effort to bring in hundreds of college students to participate in this weekend's hacking exercise meant to unearth flaws that the tech industry may have overlooked with the technology. He is the founder and president of SeedAI — a nonprofit that focuses on expanding access to artificial intelligence research and development. Carson previously spent time in D.C. as legislative director for Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), executive director for the Technology Freedom Institute, and led NVIDIA’s government affairs operation. Read on to hear Carson’s thoughts on using AI to speed up scientific discovery, the very human reaction to the technology’s limits, and the federal government’s problems keeping up with tech progress. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the rest of the interview in today’s POLITICO Tech podcast. What’s one underrated big idea? I can't say if it's underrated, or simply under-discussed, but the application of artificial intelligence to the scientific exploratory process to dramatically transform our research. It's easy to lose track of the incredible rate of AI research itself. But in science, many foundational progress points have been through artificial intelligence. One good example: Anima Anandkumar at Caltech used AI to solve partial differential equations far more efficiently. That's effectively a time machine for anything involving fluid dynamics — which is a whole lot of things. So we’re getting into this recursive effect where AI gets better at directed and then autonomous scientific discovery to some extent. That requires responsibility, that requires oversight. But our ability to transform the fabric of things is moving rapidly. What’s a technology you think is overhyped? Humanoid robots. We spent a lot of time talking about robots that look and move like us. But if you think about a lot of applications — even for general-purpose things, it wouldn't necessarily make sense to recreate our form and process. So, the fixation on AI as the “Terminator” is both overrated and not necessarily useful. What book most shaped your conception of the future? “The Three-Body Problem” and a splash of “Foundation” on the side. The “Foundation” series by Isaac Asimov gives a great idea of sprawling progress combined with human interaction. They made a show, but it's worth reading the series because it's from the 1950s and there are so many interesting things still tied to it. “The Three-Body Problem” was just an incredible and specific thought experiment of what it could be like for us to encounter alien life and dramatically more advanced physics improvements. It’s a very interesting take on what it’s like to be in China and Chinese culture. But it has three books and you’ve got to read all three. Even if the first one's not your favorite, you’ve got to read the next two. What could government be doing regarding tech that it isn’t? A key problem of what the government isn't doing about technology is the fact that nobody right now knows what the hell to do about many technological advancements. They're moving so rapidly — it's hard to be nimble. By that, I mean the federal government is designed — purposefully so — to not move in week-to-week policy shifts, just because a new piece of AI research came out. Part of what the government isn't doing is exploring all possible avenues to bring in more smart people. Great policy support right now is done by fellows who come and participate through programs like TechCongress or Horizon or PIF — the Presidential Innovation Fellowships. That's still just a headcount thing. So how do we find ways to meet the methodical, deliberate process of the federal government? That’s a creativity exercise, and that's on all of us. What has surprised you most this year? I was not surprised most by the sudden public explosion of interest in artificial intelligence. It was like when you watch a movie with a bad twist. What has been very surprising to me was the very human reaction to the news by otherwise intelligent people. Everybody kind of suddenly moved to, “Oh, it can't pass the MCAT? It's not better than me. Oh, wait, it can't pass the bar? And give me relationship advice? And tell me how to fix my VCR?” People are weirdly insecure about it. But I'm on panels and the more technical a person is, the more philosophical they have gotten. We've gotten to the point where we kind of understand the tech, but now — we have to think about a lot of things involving ourselves.
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