Bigger, Better Ambitions for AI with Arati Prabhakar - Conversations with the Executive Fellows in Applied Tech Policy

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Arati Prabhakar. Dr. Prabhakar was President Biden’s science and technology advisor and led the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2022–25. She is currently a School of Information and Goldman School of Public Policy Executive Fellow in Applied Technology Policy. Her four decades of professional contributions span the public and private sectors. She has led DARPA and NIST, been a partner at an early-stage VC firm and a senior corporate executive, and started an innovation nonprofit.

This discussion will take place the morning of Dr. Prabhakar's 4 pm Fellowship lecture, "The Stakes Are High: Science & Technology for Our Future."

Dr. Prabhakar will speak with AFOG about her plans for the Executive Fellowship this year regarding on the future of AI:

What is your greatest hope for what we accomplish with AI?

Much of today’s talk is about business productivity. That has to be done right, in ways that protect civil rights and civil liberties, respect and boost workers and creators, and manage safety and security. And if it is done right, productivity can be a boon.

But our dreams for AI reach much further. We want to use AI to create better drugs faster, close educational gaps for our kids, craft better weather forecasts, transform public service delivery, design more sustainable materials, decarbonize our economy, and much more.

Fully realizing these hoped-for benefits will take much more than simply training a model or starting a company. Some of these big ambitions require working out issues of data access, IP, and compensation for training data. Many require deep technical research to develop advanced AI capabilities. All of them require validating AI systems and rigorously testing them in real-world settings. And each powerful application will come with new risks that need to be managed and mitigated: sometimes physical safety risks, often risks of bias in data and discrimination in use, often risks to privacy, and almost always employment impacts.

Join us for a discussion of big visions for AI that can change people’s lives, and what it will take to realize these dreams.