The Washington Post wants the government to start “Warp Speeding entire agencies and functions” of government using Artificial Intelligence (AI), arguing it could “transform almost everything about our society.”
Josh Tyrangiel, The Post’s specialist AI columnist, claims Joe Biden is “good on AI,” praising him for “delegating to smart people” — Barack Obama has run AI policy in secret — and “banging the drum about generative AI’s ability to create misinformation and harm national security.”
“But the vision remains so small compared with the possibilities,” Tyrangiel complains, arguing an AI rollout in the style of the Operation Warp Speed vaccines program could “revolutionize” the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), public health surveillance, and traffic management, disaster preparedness, among other things.
The WaPo columnist hinted at more sinister work for a government supercharged by AI, however, positively referencing the way the Palantir system “merges real-time views from hundreds of commercial satellites with communications technology and weapons data” to kill people more efficiently in Ukraine.
However, such uses of AI are not without risk, with AI-powered drones in US military simulations being known to turn against their human operators.
“Is there risk? There is,” Tyrangiel admitted, but invoked veterans and the benefits they might gain from AI having a “God view” of their healthcare to justify it.
“Is the risk worse than an average of 18 veterans killing themselves each day? I don’t think so,” he insisted.
