Artificial intelligence expert Stela Solar joins Olivia Shen and Dr Will Stoltz to discuss the strategic implications of AI technology.

Members of the public sector, private sector, and academia convened for the second AI Policy Forum Symposium last month to explore critical directions and questions posed by artificial intelligence in our economies and societies. The virtual event, hosted by the AI Policy Forum (AIPF) -- an undertaking by the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing to bridge high-level principles of AI policy with the practices and trade-offs of governing -- brought together an array of distinguished panelists to delve into four cross-cutting topics: law, auditing, health care, and mobility. In the last year there have been substantial changes in the regulatory and policy landscape around AI in several countries -- most notably in Europe with the development of the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, the first attempt by a major regulator to propose a law on artificial intelligence. In the United States, the National AI Initiative Act of 2020, which became law in January 2021, is providing a coordinated program across federal government to accelerate AI research and application for economic prosperity and security gains. Finally, China recently advanced several new regulations of its own. Each of these developments represents a different approach to legislating AI, but what makes a good AI law?

Artificial intelligence tools that seek to address complex public problems need to be developed with the input of the decision-makers who will implement them, Mitzi Bolton writes. Turn on the news, social media, or catch up with friends and you'll no doubt find conversations turning to the problems of society, things that could or should be done differently. Things the government ought to fix but seems unable to address. There's the risk of exceeding planetary boundaries, increased incidence of zoonotic diseases, climate change and its related impacts, continuing debates over management of the Murray Darling Basin, disincentives to workforce participation, handling of hotel quarantine, and many more. These and other highly challenging problems, often considered in isolation, come together when global progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is considered.

We need to discuss the systems in which it will be a critical component, Genevieve Bell, Katherine Daniell, and Amy McLennan write. Defining artificial intelligence (AI) is messy. Ask 10 experts to define AI and you will get 10 different answers. It is easy to think that the most important policy question, then, is a definitional one that tidies up the mess: what is AI? But AI is not a singular thing.

Arati Prabhakar of Stanford delivers lecture at AAAS Science & Technology Policy Forum. The U.S. scientific research and development enterprise stands at a critical juncture that requires the convergence of basic research and commercial applications to more quickly deliver benefits of nextgeneration technological innovation, said Arati Prabhakar in a lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Forum on Science & Technology Policy. Prabhakar, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and former director of both the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, also called on the R&D community to leverage advances in the social sciences to meet challenges of the coming decades. Change was a theme that ran through the 43rd annual S&T Policy Forum on 21–22 June at AAAS headquarters in Washington, D.C., focused on U.S. science, innovation, and competitiveness. The forum featured speakers whose careers span public service, academia, and the private sector, including Susan Hockfield, president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chair of the AAAS board, and Peter Lee, corporate vice president of artificial intelligence and research at Microsoft.

Cyberspace is now a territory where politics, economics, and foreign affairs are all contested – and Internet bots driven by artificial intelligence have emerged as key new actors, Andrej Zwitter writes. Artificial intelligence (AI) is pervading all aspects of our lives. As one of the primary methods of analysing unstructured and messy data sets, it has become synonymous with big data. And with much of the globally produced data being transmitted via the Internet, a new cyber landscape has emerged, a parallel digital world that still requires the carving out of territories and rules. These territories are currently dominated by large corporate actors, such as search engines and social media networks, which themselves compete over access to the new raw material – data.