How Silicon Valley's congressman sees the future

Presented by American Edge Project: How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures

Jul 15, 2022 View in browser   By Ben Schreckinger Presented by American Edge Project With help from Derek Robertson Ro Khanna, February 2020 | Jessica Chou for Politico Magazine Today, we're introducing the Future in Five Questions, a regular Friday feature in which we'll ask a thinker, doer or policymaker in the tech world to share their view of the road ahead. This week, we're kicking it off with Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose district includes much of Silicon Valley. He's also the author of " Dignity in a Digital Age," published in February. What's one underrated big idea? High-speed railways. It's only underrated in the United States though. China has the largest high-speed railway in the world, and their trains go over 4 times as fast as in the United States. We need to make a massive investment in high-speed rail if we are serious about competing in the 21st century. What's a technology you think is overhyped?  Well, I personally still prefer paper books over e-books. We spend so much time on our phones and computers these days, it's nice to get a break. It's just a better experience. And it's easier to go back and re-read sections when you want. What book most shaped your conception of the future? "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" by Lawrence Lessig. It's a deep dive on how the internet works and is regulated. It's a brilliant, original book that works through big questions about how to regulate the internet, the choices we will have to make and what we want its future to look like. What could government be doing regarding tech that it isn't? Back in 2018, Speaker Pelosi asked me to put together a framework for a better-regulated internet. This became my Internet Bill of Rights, a set of ten consumer data privacy regulations principles that I believe every American is entitled to. The principles are basic — things like making sure people have the right to know when their data is being collected and get notified when there's a security breach. It's even endorsed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web and founder of the Web Foundation. But since I got to Congress, we have not passed a single, meaningful piece of legislation on data privacy. I'm hopeful that the new sense of urgency in light of the Court's decision on Roe will generate action. What has surprised you most this year? I'm surprised that more people aren't talking about the implications of a fully functional quantum computer. There are already lots of companies working to build one. Once one of these companies succeeds, I think it will really be transformative. There are a number of benefits that can come from quantum computing, like speeding up the process of developing new drugs and vaccines. But if we aren't prepared, a quantum computer could also pose serious threats for consumer data protection and our national security. Congress isn't known for being proactive, but I have a bipartisan bill that just passed the House to prepare the federal government now and ensure that our systems and valuable data are quantum proof.   A message from American Edge Project: Voters Focused on Inflation – Not Breaking Up Tech  Midterm voters' top priorities for Congress are inflation (88%), national security (86%), and jobs (85%). 84 percent of voters agree "there are other, bigger problems facing the United States, we should not be focused on breaking up U.S. tech companies right now." Read more from our poll in partnership with Ipsos.   arrested development Stop me if you've heard this one before: A piece of ambitious bipartisan legislation is at risk of being seriously pared down. The Senate passed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act in June 2021, which would have driven tens of billions to various "key technology focus areas" including AI (see DFD's report on the attendant lobbying gold rush), quantum computing, "immersive technology" (read: virtual reality) and robotics. But it's stalled in the House and now appears to be dead, at least for the moment. Dan Correa, CEO of the Federation of American Scientists, described what might be lost if the bill dies. As the FAS sees it, that kind of funding isn't just a budget boost, but can genuinely build new structures at places like the National Science Foundation —  "new staffing models, new funding models, ways in which we can try to take what is very promising in the lab and get it into practice" — that could increase US competitiveness, and even seed new kinds of regional growth. Given the bill's bipartisan support it's not impossible to imagine it being revived someday, but also these kinds of opportunities for big congressional spending don't come along every day. — Derek Robertson afternoon snack A Microsoft demonstration of "Minecraft." | AP A brief reminder of the frequent overlap between the technologies we cover here at DFD: OpenAI, the research shop that brought the world the GPT-3 language processor and DALL-E image generator, has programmed an AI to play the metaverse-like game "Minecraft." Video games featured some of the earliest widespread uses of what we now call "artificial intelligence," through the simple act of programming virtual characters to have their own lifelike "behavior." But what OpenAI has done is something considerably more sophisticated than that: their AI was trained on tens of thousands of hours of gameplay to mimic a human player's decision-making process by, for example, crafting rare tools in order to more efficiently collect the game's resources. The idea of a world populated with such programmed "actors" raises a slew of questions: what does a self-contained virtual economy like the one "Minecraft" has look like when AI "choices" are introduced into it? Should it be a terms-of-service violation to troll or hack an AI? How will AI behaviors change the way humans themselves interact with a virtual world, or see its incentives? As the scale of such worlds keeps growing, those won't long be esoteric questions for developers or gaming executives. — Derek Robertson   A message from American Edge Project:   The Future In 5 Links Crypto's bankruptcy boom has earned the legal assistance of white-shoe giant Kirkland & Ellis. AI tools like DALL-E are fun, but still dependent on the human imagination. An anonymous whistleblower accused GM of planning to launch its autonomous vehicles prematurely. Startups are competing to build a Web3 messaging app. Forget autonomous vehicles. What will it take to get us around in vacuum-sealed tubes? Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Konstantin Kakaes (kkakaes@politico.com);  and Heidi Vogt (hvogt@politico.com). Follow us on Twitter @DigitalFuture. Ben Schreckinger covers tech, finance and politics for POLITICO; he is an investor in cryptocurrency. If you've had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up here. And read our mission statement here.   A message from American Edge Project: From our midterm voter poll in partnership with Ipsos: 74 percent of voters agree that "breaking up U.S. tech companies will only hurt America's competitiveness on the global stage, at a time when our adversaries are becoming bolder." 69 percent of voters agree that "breaking up U.S. tech companies threatens our national security by letting China gain a technological upper hand." Learn more.     Congressional Vision for Tech Across America – July 21 Event : How can innovation play a role in America's global economic leadership? On July 21, Rep, Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) are sharing Congress' vision for the future of policy and technology surrounding workforce and education at MeriTalk's MerITocracy 2022: American Innovation Forum. The forum will feature Hill and White House leadership and industry visionaries as they dig into the need for tangible outcomes and practical operational plans. Save your seat here.       Follow us on Twitter Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports Derek Robertson @afternoondelete Konstantin Kakaes @kkakaes Heidi Vogt @HeidiVogt   Follow us

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