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Irish Times

US AI policy risks disaster because of Trump

Just shy of a century ago, the United States had the disaster that was the Dust Bowl. On pretty much every level, ecological, economic and social, it was a catastrophe. Farmers in the Southern Plains ignored decades of advice to rotate their crops, causing extraordinary damage to crops. The focus on high yields in the short-term, against the advice being roared at them, proved devastating. With his proposals around artificial intelligence (AI) in July, Donald Trump all but heralded in a digital Dust Bowl. The US president's executive orders around AI, particularly his claimed concerns around so-called 'woke AI', rather misses the core issue at hand. Trump's stated proposal is to strip AI of ideology, which is noble on the face of things. The problem is how AI, or really any technology, is developed. There's one common factor with all technologies: people. Systemic biases, specifically the unconscious ones, are a plague upon technological development that negatively affect all users irrespective of political persuasion. Bias mitigation, which is still in its developmental life cycle, has already proven effective at avoiding major missteps when it comes to data management. It addresses the core issue, that the person writing the code is not always reflective of the person using it. This covers all the obvious biases around gender and race but also economic circumstance, location factors (think of rural vs urban transport), and even factors in how these affect logistics. That last bit is why Trump's proposal is bad for even his most ardent supporters. The global flow of commerce is a labyrinth of connections that would give Theseus a migraine. The use of bias mitigation in any system that uses data, including AI, accounts for a lot of the blind spots in any logistical operation. The impact on the US economy could be enormous as nations operating with bias mitigation, including China and the EU , will have a clear advantage. The basic ability to trade and attract talent will increase for those nations, as they won't have added needless complications to their own economies. Those on Trump's side would contend this is merely a measure against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Whatever your stance on DEI, this is simply false. Bias mitigation is far more boring than that. It isn't rooted in the need to make the world fairer for minorities. It's much colder than that. Bias mitigation is about ensuring no relevant factor is unaccounted for. If it can affect the data set, it needs to be factored in. This isn't 'woke AI', it's smart organisation. There'll be plenty of rhetoric in the weeks to come about how important it is, on an emotive level, for either everyone to have their voice heard or not. That debate's existence will be music to the ears of any economy seeking to take business away from the US. In Europe and China, far from ideological pals, the role of bias mitigation is understood for what it is, the best course for technological development. Companies operating in these territories will benefit from more talent seeking to work with this approach. Likewise, US companies will seek, albeit under the radar from the US president, to move more development operations outside of it for the same reason. As with the Dust Bowl, there is a short-term gain here. By not putting in the labour required of bias mitigation, AI companies not using it will be able to spin up new products quickly and make immediate revenue gains. [ Top seven tech firms' earnings put AI divide in sharp focus Opens in new window ] Yet in key areas that Trump's supporters want to revive, such as manufacturing and energy, this short term gain will be enormously damaging. By excluding bias mitigation, they are making the logistical labyrinth more confounding. AI companies in the US will suffer from regulatory whiplash, not knowing what changes they need to make to keep up with the whims of their government. This in turn will stifle innovation and hamper public trust in the ability of AI to deliver real benefits. There's no point trying to rationalise the why of this decision, not because of the usual criticisms of Trump but rather because of how much this mirrors the tragedy of the Dust Bowl. For all the good advice farmers in the US Southern Plains got, they were too focused on the immediate gain. They were in competition and wanted to get ahead in the race in the quickest way possible. If Trump's plan comes to pass, then the US will take a lead, of sorts, in the AI arms race by removing bias mitigation. Roll-out of systems will be faster. It's when, and we won't have to wait long, those systems break that the problems will surface. The six-year peak of the Dust Bowl's worst impact was repaired partially through nature, as the soil was left untouched, and largely through acknowledging mistakes that were made. The New Deal's approach to agriculture in the 1930s aggressively focused on crop rotation, to maximise soil health. The digital dust bowl will only be solved by whoever inherits the mess left behind by this administration. In time, the damage to AI development in the US will be undone out of economic necessity. It need not occur in the first place.