Have a cursory glance at the artificial intelligence news cycle under the new administration, and you might think it is only about data centers, trillions of dollars in investments, bellicose statements regarding geopolitical rivalries, and rescinding woke AI policies. Yet, underneath the surface, there are also important matters of AI governance being settled this month.
AI governance is an obscure field that has baffled policy experts, jurists, and philosophers in recent years. Anticipating usages of AI on a case-by-case basis is unfathomable, not only because the technology will evolve in novel ways but also because it will be used for governing societal, economic, and political aspects of our existence. It is very likely, with overwhelming deficits and crumbling bureaucracies, that our government apparatus will at some point be reorganized around AI systems. (In this regard, the Department of Government Efficiency is only a first experiment.)
