5 Questions for Sunny Gandhi | Edit ShortsCars

By Aaron Mak

Presented by Alliance for a Better Future

Sunny Gandhi | Encode AI handout.

Sunny Gandhi is the co-executive director of Encode AI, a nonprofit that advocates for ensuring humans maintain control over and benefit from artificial intelligence. Gandhi was involved in efforts to institute the first U.S. law restricting the use of AI in nuclear weapons systems, helped defeat a federal proposal to preempt state AI regulations, and pushed for the passage of the TAKE IT DOWN Act against nonconsensual deepfakes. Gandhi, recently named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, talks to us about the data center backlash and recruiting for government tech talent. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What’s one underrated big idea?

More visibility of what's happening inside AI companies. I think a lot of what currently happens is that AI companies tell the public one thing and regulation advocates tell the public another thing. The government gets some sort of view into what's happening, but there's not really that much consensus. If you're a busy policymaker, you don't have that much time to really sort out what actually is correct and what's not. And we have no monitoring regime, we have no ability to really test models. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation is funded at a measly $10 million. So just giving more talent to the government and visibility into what's happening is super underrated.

What’s a technology you think is overhyped?

Quantum computing. People talk about quantum computing as something that is going to be even more transformative than artificial intelligence. Most of it seems to me like it's still relatively far off, and it doesn't really feel like its promises have come out. Legislators get really excited about it, possibly because of the potential investment, but it's too far out to seem like it's going to be really important in the near term.

POLITICO's Decoded Summit

The future of AI policy is being defined in power centers from coast to coast. Join POLITICO's Decoded Summit – Washington, D.C. on Sept. 16 for conversations on AI regulation, global competition, enterprise adoption, and more.

Register for the livestream.

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

Hiring more competent technical staff, getting the kinds of people who you need to really understand this technology. There's a very small number of them and it's a very competitive market in industry to get them. The government should be making more of an effort to make overtures to those folks and try to get them to come help us understand in D.C. what this technology looks like and how to react more appropriately, rather than having a lot of people without technical backgrounds who are trying to make decisions on this without having a complete picture.

Creating signals that this is something that the government is interested in is really important. I don't think the government is ever going to match the pay scale of what engineers make at the AI companies. But I do think that if there were consistent signals from Congress, from the Executive [Branch], a lot of people would forego those salaries to do this for their country. So far, the reception for whether this is something the government wants has been really mixed. With that uncertainty, people are not going to give up jobs that pay seven or eight figures.

What book most shaped your conception of the future?

“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes. It’s a case study of what we are going through in that a small group of scientists realize they are creating something that is going to change everything. The government doesn't really get it until it does, and then the thing gets built much faster than anyone previously thought. There were people trying to get physicists to stop publishing. There were people thinking about what the post-war era would look like. There were people who saw the problem really early and tried to get some agreement on what a better governance regime could look like.

There is a similar story happening right now with AI policy, where we are clearly building this incredibly powerful technology that is going to transform the world incredibly fast. Not everyone has really woken up to how transformative it's going to be. There's a lot of good lessons to learn from how really smart people thought about this half a century ago.

What has surprised you the most this year?

The data center revolt has been incredibly surprising. Over the last couple years, it's become very clear that polling for AI was quite negative, and that voters were really anxious for the government to do something about regulating AI. I didn't expect that they would channel a lot of that frustration into anti-data center projects. I think it's because data centers are a physical manifestation of the thing voters are really anxious about. We're told that AI is going to raise your electricity prices, might take your jobs, might cause catastrophes. It's really hard to feel a sense of agency about how you actually do something about that, and how you get the government to do something about that. And so a lot of people channeled that towards: "Well, let's just stop building the data centers in our district." Whether or not you agree with that analysis, I think it was completely unexpected that this would be the manifestation of this frustration.

YOU MIGHT LIKE

Miami-Dade County’s potential involvement in the release of the latest Grand Theft Auto video game is stirring political backlash, POLITICO’s Kimberly Leonard reports.

“Grand Theft Auto VI,” set to debut in November, takes place in a fictional city heavily inspired by Miami. A proposed collaboration obtained by The Miamian could see the county and GTA developer Rockstar Games create an airport immersion experience and manhole art all related to the game.

“Given Miami-Dade’s clear influence on the game, we think there could be a unique opportunity to generate revenue for the county while showcasing Miami-Dade to a massive audience,” the office for Democratic Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. The office stressed that “nothing has been formally agreed to or approved.”

GOP county Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez and Miami-Dade GOP Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz objected to the proposal over the murder and drug dealing featured in GTA. “We should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence,” they said in a statement.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, also a Republican, agreed, telling POLITICO: “The government shouldn’t be in the business of pushing violent messages into the community where parents have no control. Exposure to any video game, regardless of the content, should be left to parents. And this deal demeans the Miami community and law enforcement that have achieved record crime lows. I support Sheriff Rosie’s position here.”

Magnus Hjort, director general of the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency, warned Russian bot networks pose a threat to upcoming European elections, POLITICO’s Tim Ross reports.

Hjort said the misinformation campaigns are trying to promote false narratives about Ukrainian corruption to make voters question whether their leaders should continue providing weapons and funds to Kyiv.

Hjort and his team believe that Russia is focused on spreading online misinformation around German state votes and the French presidential campaign, rather than Sunday’s general election in Sweden. “Our assessment is that Russia is prioritizing other elections, other countries, larger countries in Europe,” said Hjort. “We have elections in Germany coming up on the regional and local level,” he added. “We have presidential elections in France next year.”

Screenshot/X

Spencer Cox on America’s political divide

In the latest episode of On the Road, Jonathan Martin sits down with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to discuss his new book, Off Ramp, the future of the Republican Party, immigration reform and what he says it will take to rebuild trust and community in American life.

Watch now.

• A Texas court rules that TikTok misled users about child safety features. 
• A hack of Japan’s Digital Agency may have compromised 246,000 people’s data. 
• The AI industry fears slowing development could violate antitrust laws. 
• Sen. Josh Hawley presses OpenAI over the Hugging Face hack. 
• The Pentagon is negotiating a $5 billion loan for AI infrastructure. 

Stay in touch with the whole team: Gabby Miller (gmiller@politico.com); Aaron Mak (amak@politico.com); Bob King (bking@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com); John Hewitt Jones (jhewittjones@politico.com).

Follow us on X

John Hewitt Jones @johnhewittjones Nate Robson @Nate_Robson1 Owen Dahlkamp @Owen_Dahlkamp Katherine Long @katherinealong Aaron Mak @aarontmak Gabby Miller @__gabbymiller

Follow us