Representative DeFazio,
I am a young researcher in AI who recently attended NIPS 2017 (Neural Information Processing Systems), the world's premiere conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The science is interesting and exciting, but the way it is being used is worrisome. AI already affects how news reaches us, which criminals are granted parole, and how medical diagnoses are performed. Soon it will affect many other ways we live our lives. That being said, the field is dominated by a few very powerful corporations whose interests do no always align with those of America's citizens. For example, Facebook uses AI to increase user "engagement," which translates to addictive behaviors in many of us. Privacy is another issue; AI has the ability to assimilate and reason over our most sensitive personal information. During the Arab Spring, for example, governments used advanced speech recognition to track individual protestors by their voices. AI is a powerful tool, both for good or otherwise. We need the government to moderate the ways large corporations use AI 1) so that its benefits reach all Americans instead of a minority and 2) so that they cannot willingly violate our right to privacy.
Thanks for taking the time to hear my voice.
Sam Greydanus