Information technology and innovation foundation, which has been ranked for the past several years as ontop technology think tank. Be here today to partner on this great workshop on this event in particular, this panel. Im joined by lynn parker, assistant director for Artificial IntelligenceWhite House Office of science and technology policy. Next to her jason, general manager for Corporate Standards Group at microsoft. Finally Anthony Robbins, Vice President for north American Public sector at in nvidia. So we have a great group of public and private sector experts that can talk about activities in the Standard Development space from both the industry using the standards and the people helping define u. S. Leadership in ai standards. So before we get launched into the discussion, which will be about 45 minutes, then an opportunity for audience q a at the end, i want to do a little bit of stage setting here. So the term ai often used to describe two different but related topics. Theres technical standards, things like reliability, performance, accuracy, then theres the oversight of the ai systems. These are very different but related things. Standards are a prerequisite for oversight. The oversight side of this conversation receives disproportionately large share of attention. Potential for black box systems running amok without knowing whats going on has dominated conversations and Public Policymakers understandably want to a rece those concerns. Unfortunately this prioritization of oversight is coming at the expense of focus on Standards Development. The activities required to develop standards requires a robust Scientific Understanding that can serve as underpinning for this oversight. When we say things we want oversight for transparency, what some people are calling for. Right now algorithmic transparency doesnt have a definition. We dont know what that means, how to compare transparency of one system to another. Rushing to make rules about doing the scientific legwork behind it is going to be short sighteds and any rules will necessarily be arbitrary. I guess the challenge for us, how do we get nontechnical policymakers to care about this important work. Its a challenge. Im sure they know that. We hope to get out of this conversation today Going Forward, educate policymakers about importance of scientific legwork shaping future of oversight of ai, all the concerns that there is in the public about the potential misuse of systems, we need to make sure that translates into momentum for this kind of scientific investment. So to start off im going to tee up with an easy question for panelists to get the ball rolling. What is your primary focus when it comes to ai Standards Development. Its going down the line. Are you working on develop yourself or how do you engage with standards in the community, what do they mean to your business or federal role in the government. Good morning, thank you all for being here this is an important activity. My role at the wlous, assistant director for ai, which means i oversee white house activities in ai which promote ai. One of the important areas im working on now, all the deliverables called for in the executive order and you heard this morning main deliverable were discussing today, which is the creation of a plan for how the federal government should prioritize its engagement and Technical Standards Development for ai. So this is obviously since its one of the key actions in the executive order, its recognized by the administration as an area that we as a nation need to get engaged. There are a lot of good reasons for doing that. We can go into that as we go through the panel. But my role right now is looking at the great work doing leading the way here. Certainly rfi is an important way for stakeholders to provide feedback. We encourage you and your colleagues to provide that feedback. In workshop is an important opportunity to hear from everyone about what the federal government should be emphasizing. As the plan is developed and issued for public comment, we encourage you to respond to that and provide feedback. Im cheering on all the great work that they are doing lower and all that youre doing to contribute to that. Good morning. Its a pleasure to be here as well. Thank you for hosting and getting this important process understand way. At microsoft i am running a team of Global Practitioners who are involved in standardization at the International Level through primarily in relation to Artificial Intelligence jtc 1 and well be talking more about that throughout the day. Ill point out as an organization microsoft is looking at Artificial Intelligence and the role that standardization is going to play in a broader spectrum and recognize standards are one element of the ways that the Technical Community will look at inner operability and methods and practicing happening where people are working on exchanges. In the policy environment i absolutely agree and support the need for thinking about accountability. When you go down the path of accountability, principles or any countries around the world looking at this, we recognize the relationship between the regulatory approach and accountability comes down to the criteria by which you measure. That criteria is going to be fundamentally predicated on the standardization work done. Look forward toted panel and thank you again for joining us. Good morning, my name is Anthony Robbins and i work for in nvidia. Ive spent my career at the intersection of government and commercial industry, most of which has been with Silicon Valley companies. In my role at in nvidia, im kind of the person in the field trying to predict and guide and relates to ai, do the right work to interpret needs from in nvidia and commercial industries. So we were excited in february to see the executive order that was signed on ai. Ening if you look at that executive order, you might convince yourself that it was the first time an executive order has been signed on one of these Big Technology waves. Big waves being work we did with client servers early on to mobility to cloud to ai. Ai has one thing thats different than previous ways that came before it, that is its bigger than all of them combined. I will kind of grab onto something. So we do spend a lot of time as people pandas leaders in this Community Talking about some of the challenges with ai. How secure and robust is it . Where does the bias exist and things like that. I think its important for us as leaders and for us in this room, this community, to spend a lot of time talking about progress being made and things being done to help mankind and improve the planet and make a significant contribution. There are children literally, ill say that for High School Kids, but there are High School Kids making profound impact on the world that we live in and the work they are doing around ai. So as much as we want to go, you know, act sometimes out of concern, and we want to address standards and international and the role they have relative to national strategies, i think its really important for us as leaders to celebrate the amazing progress that is under way. If you look back into the history books, i guess the federal government has been touching ai since the 50s and we had major breakthrough in 2012. So the work thats going on here is the most challenging, exciting i. T. Or Technology Transformation of our respective lifetimes. So im excited to be a part of this panel and making a contribution. Great. Great p thank you. So the rush to develop standard for ai is new but the recognition of the importance of standards, the standards about the process is not. Weve seen this kind of cycle happen before with previous generations of technology. So what kind of precedent exists for how were going to be approaching the ai standards process, what other models can we look from or are there potentially new challenges we have to address . Well, i think if you look at historically the way standards have developed, lets look at like the computer era information wranlg we haveage w lot of Technology Developed and standards developed for those technologies. Historically the worldclass ideas that were creating innovations in that field were coming from American Companies. And so certainly we very much support the voluntary consensus, open, transparent industryled standards developed process. Because most of the inventions or innovations were coming from American Companies for the most part, the folks that were at the table conversations about technology, technical standards were primarily American Companies. And so that process that worked out well. But i think we cant assume that because its worked out well for American Companies in the past it will continue to work out well Going Forward, because now the landscape has changed, economic competitiveness has changed. We have strategic competitors in this space who also are recognizing the importance of technical standards. So i think the process that has worked well in the past for the era of information age, we want to foster that Going Forward, that open transparent, consensus driven approach, voluntary approach. We have to recognize were in a new climate now, so that Global Competitiveness now requires us to be more intentionally proactive in promoting that open transparent process so that we can make sural of our good ideas coming out of the United States have an equal footing. Were not afraid of competition internationally but i think the standards process cant just presume, in some sense, the federal government, not nist in particular but broader speaking hasnt recognized the importance of standards for ai because we presumed that the process in the past continues to work well Going Forward. I think the past the process has worked well, computer innovations means we dont need to let our guard down and presume Going Forward we dont need to be more proactive promoting that open process of promoting technical standards. So i concur that if we use history as a guide, look back and say how is it that u. S. Industry and ict sector has been so strong. Theres no question one of the underpinnings to it has been dynamic standardization environment. The dynamic standardization environment has been created keeping open all possibilities in full spectrum of approaches, everything from national processes to the international processes. And u. S. Industry has been adept at making use of that full spectrum depending on what it is youre trying to get done and at what time. I want to take a step back to my opening comments and recognize i agree with dr. Parker things have changed. I think they have changed in a fundamentally divot way than different way people are thinking about with ai. Open Source Software, youre going to see a new factor that will play in how inner operable engineering will be addressed. Engineers are going to move to a much more rapid pace of inner operability work by moving projects up into that environment. That does not take away from the role standardization is going to play but means that things are fundamentally different not in the way of saying other nations will beat us by standardizing first or something of the sort but a function of how engineers and contributors come to the table and lead with innovation and lead with ideas that bring about a foundation of understanding and issues that are transparent, that you can understand what the technologies are, policies can be built on them. But its not going to be a function of saying were going to create standards that favor one nation over another or put up barriers, because that is a misuse of standardization. Its a function of use standards as a way to make sure the contributions are out there and strong and leading the discussion. You do want to preserve that open system as much as possible following the principles that have led to the great success. So to me i think theres a great deal of merit looking at where standardization has been but recognizing there has been a fundamental change but not about who is racing to get the first standard. Because those of us in industry will tell you standards can be Market Makers but really products come down to the aggregation of sometimes hundreds if not dozens of standards. Its really about the layering of higher value work above and beyond beyond standardization thats about market success. I would put it in a slightly different context. Trying not to repeat anything thats been said. Theres a few things. What have we learned about standards efforts that have kind of come before us . Most recently would be the work thats occurred in Cyber Security where 160 Different Countries have rallied around different aspects of standardization. I think thats a pretty good model relative to as we think about standards at scale. Where the model may break down a little bit is it still is not at the scale that were talking about here in the complexity were talking about with respect to ai. Because we are talking about nations who want to create immense value for themselves. We are talking about concerns with the application of ai. So weve got to deal with that. The other thing is as i mentioned in my opening comments, when we think about the society and we think about trust and security, an important aspect of the adoption of ai will be the improvement of societys belief and trust in the technology and it alickability to be in ai for good. I think standards play an Important Role as it relates to that. I think nis is really important and theres a couple of things. We mentioned a couple of ideas around standards whether its open Standard Development to the progress weve made thus far in ai. The other thing that i would recommend for the federal government is its not just about the standards itself. Its about the use cases for which we may be interested in in the federal government. For example on the civilian agency side, when we think about waste, fraud, and abuse, theres Different Things that we might consider relative today a and citizen privacy than maybe on the department of defense when we think about platform sustainment or how we think about Cyber Security. Important in the last administration as one of the reports that came out that talked about benchmarks and standards and prototypes, i think its really important that we actually get started and build some prototypes and some Lessons Learned in use cases that relate to how the federal government might adopt ai and deploy ai because that may inform some learning that may inform our position on standards. Great. So i want to pick up on a theme that all of you addressed about this idea of u. S. Leadership and Standards Development. One of the issues we keep hearing about as we talk to folks in industry is that in the kind of International Standards body community, these organizations that exist, the presence of the Chinese Government is increasing. They are sending huge amounts of delegates that are coordinated. China picks national champions. They have clear, specific goals in mind. The u. S. Approach is different. We send government representatives but we send industry representatives and were not trying to champion a particular company and develop standards around them but create a competitive fair open standard. The concern we keep hearing about is china is much more effective about kind of potentially tipping the scales should they choose to favor them in an anticompetitive way to benefit their own domestic industry as theyve done in the past. So what is the solution here for the United States . How can industry and government Work Together to kind of create a fair even Playing Field for Standards Development . Im happy to start, but im sure everybody has got good opinions on this. Im going to be the contrarian on the panel. It seems to be my role today. I think theres zero evidence that the chinese have an unfair advantage in the International Standards system. The reason i would say that is the wtotbt principles follow very explicitly prevent or have rules in place to diminish dominance. And i speak about this as a very large corporate player. I recognize the dynamics at play in these bodies. As a country, as industry we would far rather have the chinese involved in the International System where they are engaged in one country one vote dynamics or in an environment where they need to bring ideas to the table like the germans do, like the americans do, like the japanese do, and argue the them out in a community rather than behind a wall in country