Welcome back to our regular Friday feature, The Future in Five Questions. Today we have Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), who represents Washington’s First Congressional District. DelBene is the chair of the New Democrat Coalition and a former Microsoft executive, who has worked extensively on tech policy since her election to Congress in 2010. DelBene also helped found the “Reality Caucus,” a bipartisan group of lawmakers formed to promote a better understanding in Washington of virtual reality technology.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

What’s one underrated big idea?

Telehealth. One of the silver linings of the pandemic was the broader adoption of telehealth technology that makes it easier for people in rural communities, workers with atypical schedules, & lower-income Americans to access basic medical services. The more we can do to increase the use of services, the sooner providers can catch and treat health problems.

What’s a technology you think is overhyped? 

The metaverse. I’m a major proponent of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technology “XR” but the hype around the metaverse quickly shifted from excitement to jargon. Consumers, companies, and government should stay focused on the real-world medical, educational, and workforce promises of XR technology. I started and lead the Reality Caucus in the House to help educate my colleagues and the public about how this technology can help people.

What book most shaped your conception of the future?

The biggest thing that shaped my concept of the future was my time in biology research and technology. I spent a long career in companies large and small. I saw breakthroughs from email to smartphones and vaccines that were revolutionary at the time. If you could see what they looked like in their initial form you'd hardly recognize them. What's important to remember about many of these ideas and especially the people who developed them was that they didn’t come from the usual suspects at the time.

The book that best encapsulates some of these breakthroughs and ideas in technology is Walter Isaacson’s ‘The Innovators.’ He paints a rich portrait of the Digital Revolution and how the legends in the tech space we think of today got their beginning.

What could government be doing regarding tech that it isn’t?

Pass a national privacy law. Privacy is so foundational to everything technology related. We’ve made more progress on this front in the last few months than we have in any Congress before but that doesn’t mean anything until we get something across the finish line. After the Supreme Court’s appalling decision overturning the right to an abortion, many women realized their app, geolocation, and search data could be used against them because there’s no federal privacy law. I’ve been working for years to change that because we’re already so far behind on this front.

What has surprised you most this year?

The passage of the bipartisan CHIPS & Science Act. Passing this law will help boost American manufacturing and decrease our overreliance on foreign-made semiconductors. The global shortage of these components is driving up costs for families because they power almost every modern device from smartphones to laundry machines. I’m glad Congress was able to come together in the end and got this bill across the finish line.

It’s been almost a year since the Biden administration called for an “AI bill of rights” that would “ensure that data-driven technologies reflect, and respect, our democratic values,” as the White House’s Eric Lander and Alondra Nelson wrote at the time.

That official framework is still nowhere to be found, but Miriam Vogel, co-chair of the National AI Advisory Committee, reiterated that mission at yesterday’s AI & Tech Summit, in the context of global competition with China — saying that “if we create AI that demonstrates our commitment to those values… then we win.”

When it comes to exactly what it is that the U.S. might “win,” Vogel cited a recent report from the “Special Competitiveness Studies Project,” a nonprofit co-created by Google’s Eric Schmidt and aimed at bolstering the U.S.’ competitive edge over countries like China or Russia. That report warns that “Understanding the stakes requires imagining a world in which an authoritarian state controls the digital infrastructure,” and that “a losing scenario is plausible” — in short, a scenario where realities as abstract as digital freedom of speech and as concrete as Taiwan’s sovereignty are threatened by democratic nations’ falling behind on technologies like AI or chip manufacturing.

Not everyone’s souring on police use of facial recognition technology: Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police are still hoping to scale up their use of the technology, as POLITICO’s Maura Forrest reported today.

Although the RCMP aren’t currently using facial recognition, pending an internal review, documents filed in Parliament revealed they’ve signed contracts with multiple companies. Canada is one of numerous countries to have banned or otherwise sanctioned Clearview AI, one of the most prominent and controversial purveyors of facial recognition and law enforcement.

The list of countries where Clearview has been fined, banned, or otherwise sanctioned is long. In the United States, the company settled a lawsuit with the ACLU in May by agreeing not to sell its database to private actors — but use by law enforcement is still widespread despite a handful of local bans. As American tech companies continue to await the Biden administration’s “AI bill of rights,” facial recognition-based surveillance remains one of the rare uses for artificial intelligence that have inspired a more immediate public outrage and subsequent regulatory response.

• Advances in Tesla’s self-driving tech might be more impressive than any humanoid robot.
• Meta is freezing hiring amid its pivot to the metaverse.
• Read a novelist’s paean to AI art.
• What will the crypto world look like after its CEO exodus?
• An industry veteran believes China might power the next wave of Web3 gaming.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ([email protected]); Derek Robertson ([email protected]); Konstantin Kakaes ([email protected]); and Heidi Vogt ([email protected]). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter.

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