Presently, the amount of data which is produced, by both humans and machines, far outpaces humans’ ability to absorb, interpret, and make complex decisions based on all that data. Now AI uses that data as the basis for all computer learning which will become the future of extensive decision making. As an example, most humans can avoid losing at checkers where there are 255,168 unique moves of which 46,080 end in a draw. Far fewer humans would be considered grand champions of checkers, with its more than 5 x 1020, or 500 quintillion, different potential moves. Computers are extremely efficient at calculating these combinations and permutations to arrive at the best decision to such an extent that today AI programs never lose. Consequently, AI (and its inevitable evolution of machine learning), particularly its deep learning, is becoming the foundational future of decision making in medicine, finance, business, defense, and many other areas including some previously considered innovative and/or creative.

This nascent policy area will create a new legislative landscape impacting virtually all organized and professional activities in the world economy.

On January 1, 2021 Congress passed a sprawling defense authorization bill that includes a dragnet of provisions aimed at grappling with both the opportunities and risks of AI.

We at Rulon & White anticipate monumental policy issues, especially and immediately, in the following AI use cases:

• Fraud detection where the financial services industry uses AI in two ways: Initial scoring of applications for credit uses and AI to understand creditworthiness.
• Virtual customer assistance where call centers will use AI to predict and respond to customer inquiries outside of human interaction by employing speech recognition, coupled with simulated human responses, is the first point of interaction in a customer service inquiry.
• Pattern recognition and decision assistance which are already impacting legal and financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and automotive industries for the betterment of people’s lives and economic efficiency.
• Legal responsibility, recourse, and discovery which will also have intellectual property implications.

Rulon White has been advancing policy tradeoffs between government’s and clients’ interests for over a decade with ground breaking success.