YouSaid · the spoken record

Senator Todd Young

lines on the record: 22
first: 2024-04-22
most recent: 2024-04-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Here's what we're probably going to have. We're going to have in the short run some unsteadiness Right Because we're trying to learn countermeasures, we're trying to figure out how systems work. We're trying to figure all sorts of things. And then in the long run, I think we can actually push the risk down.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, low but not non existent. Which is how most of the doomsday scenarios are low probability, high cost, and we need to hedge against them. But let me say this. The first step in hedging against them is to really seek to understand them, to study them a lot better, so that before you take more costly action, Constraining the opportunity costs for humanity ahead, we really know what we're talking about.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they typically should be technology agnostic so that we don't favor or constrain different types of technologies within the market as investors, that's business people, that's consumers. And then we're going to have to work with our partners and allies on development of standards for some of these, what I'll call platform technologies. There aren't many artificial intelligence and synthetic biology are the ones that really come to mind. So there's a diplomatic component that if we want our values embedded in this and follow on generation. AI technologies, we better develop and design those technologies here, but we also need to embed the standards that we have as it relates to privacy, consumer protection, and other things into those technologies rather than leaving it to I'll pick on the Chinese Communist Party again.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I look to history, I look at what we did in the space race, I look at the innovations that have occurred through our DOE labs like the one you worked at, like the one that developed fracking technology before the frackers claimed it their own, right? So many innovations have been earned off of the toil of our researchers in our DOE labs through our land grant colleges and the other constellation of research agencies. So we need to keep making those investments. Over the years, the federal government started to pull back from research that wasn't curiosity driven, wasn't basic research, theoretical sort of research as opposed to more applied. We need some more applied research. I think that's one of the lessons we've learned in recent history. Beyond that, we need clear rules of the road, clear regulations. Those regulations ought to typically be, and I use my words very carefully here because they're exceptions to everything.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of that money is starting to flow over $200 billion of private capital has been invested and we're not even at a billion dollars even close to it of federal monies that has been released. So it's paying handsome dividends. The market is responding and we're becoming less risky in our supply chains. The idea was not to become independent of other countries. And then there's this whole other and science piece which for the purposes of this conversation, big investments in research which I mentioned earlier, not just in artificial intelligence, but that research can also flow to hypersonics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, autonomous systems, and other areas far upstream of course. But a bit more applied research than the curiosity driven research that most people tend to associate with the NSF.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the chips and science act was at once, it was a $53 billion investment in both research and incentives for the semiconductor industry. The incentives would be to reshore some of our manufacturing capacity so that our supply chains would not be as vulnerable to interruption as they, of course, were during the global pandemic, and they could be, God forbid. There was a geopolitical effort to interrupt those supply chains, say, by the Chinese Communist Party making aggressive actions towards Taiwan. It was also a national security effort because, of course, we need microprocessors and we need our own radiation hardened domestically manufactured microprocessors to go into nuclear weapons, to go into our radar systems, and all manner of other things. So that was the microprocessor piece, and we have been in the process now.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Direct DoD context, as most of the Chips and Science Act does, is indeed a national security investment. So you got the institutional muscle memory used to that notion. That is ahistorical and modern history. My colleagues typically don't think of an investment in the National Science Foundation as a national security investment, but it is. We also were able to make the case to my colleagues that by making these sorts of critical investments in research and in next generation technologies, as we did through the Chips and Science Act, it's going to lead to a lot of economic growth. And we were able to personalize that argument state by state. So that's the very same argument that we have for this situation, artificial intelligence.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say we were able to foresee the need for more research dollars as it relates to artificial intelligence. Myself, Senator Schumer, who helped get signed into law that Chips and Science Act. We made a massive allocation for additional federal research through places like the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy. It wasn't easy to get that included with the Chips piece, but arguably that will even be more consequential towards our economic security, international security in the longer run than will the Chips piece. So that authorization will allow us to now appropriate money if members of Congress can be persuaded for AI. And so I feel like half of that hard work is done. And we've got a lot more work to do, but I think the job's getting easier because we pass the chips act. And it's not just the authorization of research, but we've already made the argument very recently that something that falls outside of the”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Discern probabilities of getting certain types of infections, certain prophylactic measures we can take to extend, improve, and save people's lives. We don't have the benefit of those AI sort of insights. We can decrease the rate at which mistakes are made within a medical healthcare context. So, I mean, it goes on and on. And this is what we should be talking about. I'm sitting on a commission right now pertaining to. Technologies. And so I have charged the commission with educating me and members on specific things, innovations from material science to medicine to environmental health. I can start touting because that's going to be very powerful for my constituents and also for colleagues.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very difficult for us to quantify some of these things. I can sound very specific and learned by just throwing out figures. Within X years, we'll solve cancer, but no, we're going to rapidly compress the treatment and drug development timeline, something I've heard from our pharmaceutical makers. We will come up with drought resistant, climate change-resistant crops to help feed the world become more productive, drive down the cost of food. We'll develop the ability to have tailored personalized tutor services and mental health services vastly expanding the workforce in those areas, leveraging technology so that we'll have mental health providers in areas that we don't. We can clean up the environment in all sorts of creative ways, ways that our artificial intelligence technologies will illuminate some of the solutions to hard challenges. We'll have ways of reading health records so that we can”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We tried to make this part of the calculus. In fact, we spent at least half of the time, perhaps we should have spent even more on the AI insight forums discussing the upsides. It's not as though we had to address the upsides. The upsides are going to be a result of innovators and entrepreneurs and investors. We understand that. But I thought it was very important for us to focus on that to provide some balance to the staff members and my colleagues who were present. So constantly reminding people of that I think is going to be very important. There are, I think, what you may have characterized in the past is fantastical, some fantastical doomsday scenarios. And there are a lot of those. And there may even be a couple that are real and we need to hedge against, right? And we need to take those seriously. But we cannot become so fixated on those that we lose the forest from the trees. And we can do this. It'll be complicated. It'll be challenging. We won't get it all right in the beginning.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably using the opportunity of this legislative effort, which is ahead of us, to try and pass bills that they had prepared two decades ago. Now's my time. I've done it in other contexts, but if we do it in this context, it could be quite damaging.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is helpful. You're in the right town, right? But to the extent some of you have not been visiting with members of the Senate, members of the House who will soon be playing with live rounds, as we said in the Marine Corps, right? We'll be considering actual bills. We'll be developing bills, and we'll be voting on them. And there will still be some members who haven't done extensive homework and carry superficial views of what constitutes artificial intelligence technology. And we need all of you to disabuse them of this being an extension of social media. This is very different. And data, we're going to have to think about data perhaps in a different way. So I do think that some are either confused. There are others who are just”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it may be fair. I think this is one of the reasons these AI insight forums were helpful to sort of keep certain colleagues honest that might have been ready to move forward aggressively and with various regulatory actions. I can't promise that won't happen in certain discrete areas, but I think there's a tendency to catastrophize different technology areas as opposed to different potential outcomes. Historically, one of the many reasons that we've been a dynamic country and created favorable regulatory atmosphere for our technology developing businesses is we have laws that reflect our values. We apply those laws to technologies only if they run afoul of certain prohibited behaviors that normally don't even mention the technology, right? And if we can take, at least for the most part, a tech agnostic approach as it relates to AI development and adoption, I think that that would be more helpful. So no special carve outs.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That touch on artificial intelligence. And then there'll be some things, as you heard about earlier today, that deal with national security where we're already behind. We need to make some key investments in people and platforms. And so all of those things are among the things that I think in coming months will be addressed through the committees of jurisdiction.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we can. My hope is that we can expect all kinds of legislative efforts, not just this year, but in coming years. I don't think we have to rush to do everything at once. We need to get clarity on a lot more of people's concerns, but more importantly, what they perceive to be their opportunities is the technology evolves. As we learn more about the technology, as new versions are released, so sort of a wait and see approach. I do, however, think that there will be some things we agree on now. We agree that there needs to be some resident expertise within the White House and an ongoing basis that other departments of government look to when it comes to issues surrounding artificial intelligence. I think we need to revamp our human resources approach so that we embed more expertise in every agency of government. We can dialogue with businesses, consumers, and others about things within a department's field.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, two, really, I would say the first is just a general sense that this isn't a particularly partisan issue. I would say one could probably detect slight differences in approaches when it comes to regulation versus innovation. As you consult with members on either side of the aisle. But as it related to this topic, I think, and this gets into the second issue, there was a general embrace by my colleagues after they heard from the world's best minds that we needed to regulate, but it would have to be a light touch approach. We had to be very careful not to go overboard and constrain what is right now sort of leading edge industry and the United States is in the lead. We want to keep it that way.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Briefings and then nine, as you mentioned, AI insight forums. These were roundtable events, long tables full of talented innovators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and others. No cameras were present, as is typically the case in our hearing. So there's a lot of candid conversation on dedicated topics. We held insight forums on national security, alignment, innovation, and other topics. And members were invited to witness these guided conversations, take extensive notes, and then after that, we have a lot of work product that we can deal with, recommendations, policy concerns, and other things that will lead to actual committee hearings and legislation being proposed as is traditionally done. So those were really constructive members. Members gave a lot of positive feedback about it. We learned a lot in the process.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Well, Martin, thank you so much for having me. This great event. I understand your speaker's shared some great information today. For those who may not be familiar with how Congress typically does its business, when we're really following the normal processes we work through the committee process. So if we had gone the traditional route and trying to address artificial intelligence issues, that would have meant that a number of committees of jurisdiction would have started to hold hearings on artificial intelligence in a very public way. Members of their staff would have prepared members hours before each given briefing, and we would have learned what we could from those experts who briefed us over the course of two or three hours. Oftentimes members aren't able to dive deeply into the essence of various policy issues when we take that approach. So instead, Senator Schumer working with three other senators decided to deviate from the process. Instead, we held first three”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We also need to embed the standards that we have as it relates to privacy, consumer protection, and other things into those technologies rather than leaving it to, I'll pick on the Chinese Communist Party again.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to rapidly compress the treatment and drug development timeline. We will come up with drought resistant, climate change resistant crops to help feed the world.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This isn't a particularly partisan issue. I think there's a tendency to catastrophize different technology areas as opposed to different potential outcomes. My colleagues typically don't think of an investment in the National Science Foundation as a national security investment, but it is. I think what you may have characterized in the past is fantastical, some fantastical doomsday scenarios, and there are a lot of those. And there may even be a couple that are real, and we need to hedge against.”
2024-04-22 · a16z Podcast · Why America Must Lead in AI Investment with Senator Young (R-IN) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source