AI.gov
ai.gov
ai.gov
The US really needs a special schedule for software developers if they want technical expertise in house (and they really should have technical expertise in house)
Beyond that, you get various efficiency issues: contractor turnover tends to be higher, which is terrible when institutional memory matters or when you’re relying on their best people to keep a larger group productive, and there are often various contractual or policy issues making work less efficient. One challenge is that managing contracts is a lot of work, so there’s a temptation to go with the big companies who offer many services but that often means that they’re only good at one area and you get mediocre results in the other ones which were lumped into the same contract - often banking on the difficulty of taking corrective action meaning that people will accept low performance in non-core areas to avoid jeopardizing a core project by the same company. None of that’s intractable but it adds up and fixing it is hard.
It's also very isolating to be the "one person" who knows the subject area. Having teams of folks is much more sustainable.
Still, I agree there's a problem with salaries not being competitive. I've interned at DOE labs before and lots of people don't stay for long.
But go up and those 180k jobs would be easily 300-400K in the industry. I doubt anyone who can do that work would be interested in a measly 180K. Unless it comes with a visa...
Most of these jobs on the other hand seem to be US citizens only. Some require a security clearance which a lot of AI experts would probably rather NOT have.
The govt has record vacancy at the local, state, and federal levels for jobs[0][1][2]
Even taking steps to lower barriers to entry, they can't fill them.
[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2023/02/09/amid...
[1]: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/11/government-jobs-pandemic-re...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20231002185558/https://www.nytim...
The thing about FIRE is you actually need way more money than regular retirement, because you have to plan for a 40+year retirement instead of a 15-20 year one. On top of that you need a higher margin to account for uncertainty.
There's "barista FIRE" (save enough and then go work as a barista, typically at starbucks because they had unusually good benefits, but I don't know if all that has changed after the unionization), but honestly working for the government seems like it could be even lower-stress than being a barista.
Wage rates should be higher.
At a DOE lab in my second year of PhD I was getting ~$50/hr. When I've interned at other places I've gotten to about $60/hr. That's still below the typical rate of $80-$100/hr for a new grad (we're just talking base salary, no comp or bonuses). Definitely not market rate.
For the $180k, that's a bit tougher. Since this is all cash. I'm not aware of anyone who pays $300k all cash to newly minted PhDs except for Netflix. Otherwise that number is competitive with typical base salaries. But like you say, with equity that number doubles and so isn't competitive that way. There are benefits to a gov job (way more relaxed) but you're turning down a lot of money, that's for sure. And of course, the salaries are only competitive for newly minted PhDS, not for anyone that's been in the field post PhD for 5+ years.
You can expect to find some experts with a stronger sense of civic duty willing to take a pay cut to work for the government, but when you're talking about multiple multiples of your salary, you're going to be left with people who are not top talent or those who are already so wealthy from other jobs that they're willing to work for much less.
Usually too, the top end of the salary is never going to be offered for a govt job, because they need to be able to give you raises at your level before your next promotion. There's lots of hoops that you end up going through with gov jobs that don't exist in private industry, like pay band caps and promotion schedules that are most often seniority based rather than merit based.
It is stable, and the retirement benefits are really great. The healthcare used to be spectacular but for newer hires the healthcare benefits are more in line with what you get at a private company with good benefits that isn't a FAANG. IE, you'll still have to contribute, the government doesn't pay 100% cost of insurance anymore.
source: I used to work for the government, and know many government workers via my past work, friends, and family at the state and federal level
The solution she proposes effectively would be an expansion of the US Digital Service (which the author spearheaded) into something that approximates the British civil service, which is actually highly functional and effective.
If you actually care about this problem and have a spare Audible credit it's worth a listen.
[1] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250266774/recodingamerica
Sincerely asking, does your question intend to pre-suppose that everyone must have and express a unique perspective and no one can independently have anything in common? Or some other faux pas such a comment would run a-foul of?
When I saw original post, I had this comment. There was kinship with the parent post. Sometimes echoing your support with another comment is a valid comment too.
If you may want more novelty and context and details:
My professional experience includes working across multiple industries of bureaucrats, and that was my visceral reaction to the piece. Change usually means studying change, analysis, design and ultimately decision fatigue by committee.
There's many hard working and great bureaucrats. My statement tends to apply to the leadership and management layers. In terms of keepign things the same or very slow and tiny changes incrementaly, there's a lot of neat reading around institutionalization as it relates to not only government but bureaucracy here.
An exciting part is how the pandemic challenged and made it OK for bureaucracies to try things and to roll out programs that weren't fully thought out or known and update them regularly. In environments many people could not handle navigating.
Most of all I'm flattered by the downvotes.. happy to take those for the parent too. Perhaps I phrased it in a way that might have triggered some bureaucrats since they exist in enterprise, government, education, healthcare and more.
Or maybe it bothered the dopamine seekers in only novel and unique comments have worth.
Comments here are supposed to be substantive and thoughtful, not knee-jerk and visceral.
Maybe we are just feeling the effects that the modern American "left" is basically just the American right of the 60s lol
We need some actual liberals who aren't just socially liberal but also willing to spend money on new ideas.
It's an uphill battle to get new funding, and talking points move faster than budget approvals and program results.
Echoing that Recoding America is a great book to read even if you have nothing to do with the federal government. You might see some similarities in how large companies operate.
The real problem here is one you see in many organizations: misaligned incentives. Government has some unique challenges but most of what you see are common in the private sector, too: some people talk like the public sector is consistently super high quality on lean budgets but for every Chrome there are a dozen terrible enterprise apps which also fully count as private sector products. The pathologies are mostly the same: internal politics, building things you won’t personally use, not wanting to revisit past decisions, or otherwise having your paycheck come from things other than what’s best for your users.
Startups aren’t magic pixie dust for avoiding those problems: most fail, and the winners often hit the same problems from a different direction - making users happy until Google buys them and cancels the good parts, having to start aggressively monetizing at the expense of the user experience, etc.
These exist; they are called "firm fixed price" contracts. You still have to write the contract correctly to be outcomes focused, and that can be hard when you don't know until building/testing if you are building the right thing.[1]
1: https://derisking-guide.18f.gov/federal-field-guide/deciding...
Bureaucracies who can't change when needed, fail if they are stuck on constantly "conserving" at all costs, or "changing" at all costs.
There is some neat research out there that I will try to dig up on how corporate organizations actually benefit from having a balance between the "go" and the "whoa" in an organization, whether it is conservative or progressive views on something. This is not to say that those primarily obsessed with converving (keeping the world how it is, for the benefit of who is already benefitting only) may not be progressive and expand, nor does it mean that progressives aren't capable of restraint.
Making it about sides, is really, really, oversimplifying it though. It's one of the thing I think that is really polarizing when people who focus on differences more find more of them, but if you ask them, they ultimately have a different way of having the same thing in common. Maybe this is unique to the US, but it has always struck with me how people align completely binary around right or left when so many folks if they took the time to learn where they stand would probably end up closer to the centre on one side.
Fanaticsm at the extremes of any interpreted ideology is a bigger issue. Those folks can neither change their mind, nor change the topic, nor openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't theirs, but try to be open minded. It's my hope that societal progress can make inroads here because poeple do have more in common than they think.
I guess the president felt bad about banning GPU sales to China so he decided to gimp America too.
This sounds like a very brave proposal.
Here’s essentially, what exists today. Pretty impressive people.
Not when it procuring large systems, IT or otherwise. As routinely discussed and complained about by the National Audit Office (NAO) [0]. The civil service relies massively on external consultants and contractors to achieve anything.
It runs on "values", plus a bit of spit and prayer. There's no money.
Running something equivalent to the International Atomic Energy Agency but for AI will need funds and support of the same order.
In Britain the cs are basically providing long-term continuity regardless of how chaotic and volatile party politics becomes. What we see is that most of the machinery of state keeps working, despite the circus in the Commons. Despite Covid. Despite Brexit. So, without subscribing to an anarchic take, we somehow concede that somebody, somewhere, must be doing some work :)
Most people's contact is through online, if you can fire up even the most basic browser almost every interaction is clear, fast and smooth.
When you start dealing at a higher level (business and contracting) then you see behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain a bit. Things go more smoothly if you have the right documents and history. Isn't that the same in every country though?
So, it serves regular citizens very well, but less considerately as your needs are more complex. Effective maybe, but I didn't say "fair" :) Certainly there must be many people find it harder, and I'm probably showing my privilege.
I ended up passing on it.
They wanted an "entrepreneur in residence" to help drive change, which sounded great to me.
Then they did the whole "we need you to keep in a cup" thing.
I wouldn't have had any problem passing the test, but I told the recruiter "this is where the change needs to start".
There's no way I can attract and retain good technical talent if we're still ruling out candidates because of smoking pot.
Plus, I find the whole "pee in a cup" thing demeaning, intrusive and offensive.
The recruiter and I were both very frustrated by the situation. I wasn't the first candidate they'd lost over the issue.
I don't know if it's still like that, but the feds seriously need to get their act together in hiring process before we can improve the quality of government systems.
Like, it's bullshit that they asked, it is an invasion of privacy, it shouldn't be a reason to forgo employment of a candidate they otherwise liked, but at the same time, it wasn't an issue of like, you wouldn't get hired because of your race or gender, it was an issue of like, you'd have to abstain drugs for a while. And then, once you're part of that organization, you can help push for the exact changes you want to see in it.
It's the same reason I get frustrated with my generation not wanting to run for office: we spend all our time complaining about how awful the government is, but precious few are putting themselves out there as the instruments of that change. I don't know if it'll work out or not but I know damn well it won't if we refuse to even try.
Understand that the position was mostly charity work - the pay was negligible for a six month contract. I was ok with that part - I was motivated to help, not by compensation.
The intrusive testing, coupled with bad compensation is a root cause of the problem IMHO.
I think organizations only really change when they feel pain. In this case, my hope is that the pain of repeatedly losing good candidates is enough to drive policy change (at the congressional or executive level).
I don't think it helps to try to "change from the inside" in this case. If I (and other candidates) just roll with it, there's no incentive for change.
The change will come when enough people say "we can't hire the best people!" Until then, the only argument is "it's an invasion of privacy and outdated" but if it's not broken (i.e. not causing any problems) they won't fix it. All the candidates power is at negotiation of the offer time. Once you accept, it's kind of over.
Marijuana is still US federally illegal.
Hiring policies and legality are different matters.
If there is a hiring policy against it, then that hiring policy is paternalistic and demeaning and shouldn't exist.
If it's illegal, that's not the responsibility of the people hiring you.
The people in charge of hiring should not be trying to enforce laws outside of the workplace.
> As of April 2023, we began formally hiring remote as well as DC (local) based employees who report in-person to our D.C. office or the agency they are partnering with.
I'm also fine with the salary decrease but at least with USDS they have you work a "tour" (like a tour of duty, I guess) which lasts between 3 months and 4 years. First, that's a little ambiguous; who decides the duration of the tour? It also feels like it would be off-putting to get to the end of your fourth year and it's your best-performing year so far, but you're just Logan's Run'ed out of there. Even more so because neither Congress nor the Supreme Court, nor the overwhelming majority of state Congresses, have term limits.
from https://www.usds.gov/how-we-work ,
> With tours of service lasting no more than four years, the U.S. Digital Service brings fresh perspectives on technology and delivery to the government.
Feels like " 'fresh perspectives' for thee but not for me".
USDS's willingness to use term hires makes hiring folks in easier, in addition to ensuring that the office doesn't become stagnant.
As a general rule, this is probably true. But there are certainly roles where people are encourage to innovate. Remember, the government is huuuge. If you get a job in a legitimate research lab, you are not only encouraged, but expected to innovate. I'd be careful we're not conflating something like an operations role with that of a research role. (Although, to your point, there is some value in ops people innovating, too).
We as a society have stopped making sure our folks have overall stability in their jobs and as such, maintaining stable income for most is a priority. We don't accept failure, we don't proportionately reward risk taking (and instead, promote risk passing/mitigating), and were increasingly forgetting that regular failure is part of life. As such, even "innovative" labs are increasingly becoming less innovative, IMHO.
Where you see innovation happening is where there's typically piles of capital that provide people the stability and environments to take risks and fail, combined of course with luck or foresight in choosing the correct paths forward. That or in places where people sacrifice aspects of their own life to move something forward through some passion, obsession, etc. which is not a market of people I want to compete with.
There's an effort to train civilian acquisition professionals on how to buy and build better software, but they are pretty quickly hired by contractors or the commercial sector since their new skillset fetches a larger salary than what the government can pay (even with promotion).
I agree there needs to be a special schedule. I do think an overhaul of the civilian service is worth exploring.
A first-hand voice from California State software projects said - that the required prime contractor had 10+ person teams and $1m+ budget, and failed to build useful results. The final result from the project(s) more than once, was "oh oops, doesn't fit with -other framework- cannot be deployed". In other words, literally making things that are abandoned on Day 1 of deployment, for large money, with plenty of apparent pressure on "workers" to perform. etc..
There are decades of reports and proposals about this. Unfortunately, we keep learning the same lessons over and over.
Related: Open jobs at the CIA with the title "analyst".
There's actually precedent for this - SEC lawyers are on the SK pay scale, not GS.
It's exactly the same problem: the alternatives in finance were too lucrative to retain competent enough attorneys to regulate wall street.
Congress should create a separate tech pay scale, given the alternatives are too lucrative to retain competent enough engineers.
Why? Moreover.. how would any of this expertise actually get applied top down in a federal system? How would any department making purchases or technology decisions actually benefit from such an apparatus? Wouldn't it be more sensible for them to manage those purchasing and operational decisions the way they typically do? Having the expertise being more local to the actual deployments?
There's this "federal czar" ideology that comes from the 1950s, but I think the spread of technology and social development has reached a peak where this centralized expertise model actually holds us back. If we are /actually/ at a point where something like "ai.gov" should credibly exist, then we're definitely at a point where centralized bureaucracy isn't an adequate approach to manage outcomes.
For example judges take on their roll even though they would be paid significantly more in the private sector as lawyers.
The whole thing about contractors is so spot on. The only slight difference I would add is that the contractors will NOT hire the best talent, they will hire whoever they can to fill the position, for the cheapest price, so they can claim to have fulfilled their RFP.
It's a dead end.
These are also the same ones that are super eager to have AI replace their (unappreciated) employees. They don't care about quality at all and as long as they fulfill the contract with something barely working that's all that matters to them.
I predict things are going to worse and worse when systems don't work. Having failures in critical institutions that are life altering for the people that are unlucky enough to be the outliers is going to become the norm IMO.
I get that the pay scales don't hold a candle to private industry, but they aren't pauper wages either. They're in the top 10% of the US as a whole. I suspect if that isn't sufficient, it might indicate a difference in value systems.
If we adjust the incentives of life a bit so people aren't constantly looking for another buck to make sure they can actually retire or pay their mortgage off, assure they have access to healthcare when they inevitably get sick, and so on we might find a lot more people would invest their time towards other contributions in society rather than those that they find that compensate them the most.
They have effectively deplatformed Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia, put anyone but China within second reach from a mass data collection perspective, and expanded the economic hegemony of the US more deeply and completely than the military ever could.
The US is now on the verge of the second great breakthrough of mass automation of that data, intelligence and action. I am honestly shocked that this third stage of American Dominance has not be countered by any other nation save China, and even they're only defensively. America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy that the planet has seen so far...
The only question is if the rest of the world is going to wake up and counter this.
You could argue chicken or egg, but many of those are regulation-related.
The US used to have consumer focused regulators too, but they have been undermined for long enough to neutralize the threat to monopolistic megacorps.
The website has a section titled "Bring your AI Skills to the U.S.", and then a button with this label "Learn about pathways to work in the U.S.".
This is very encouraging. And it reminded me of Eric Schmidt's recommendation on this topic [1], which was published on the final report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence:
Chapter 10. Page 178:
"Nations that can successfully attract and retain highly skilled individuals gain strategic and economic advantages over competitors." [...] "Unfortunately, international students in the United States are increasingly choosing to study in other countries or return home. One reason is the growing backlog of green card petitions. Indian immigrants face a particularly long wait. Many will spend decades on constrictive work visas waiting to receive their green cards, hindering both the technology sector’s ability to recruit talent and Indian immigrants’ quality of life."
The report recommends to focus on building better Immigration Policies. Maybe this .gov initiative listened to the advice from the report.
[1]: https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report...
But he also seems to understand the labor/intelligence relationship to get there better than anyone else. I really missed him when he left Google, Sundar is a pail shadow.
> The only question is if the rest of the world is going to wake up and counter this.
Probably not.
Simply put, there's no first-world country in the world where top talent can earn even close to a US salary, which largely due to the fact that US is relatively permissive towards large income disparities.
Other countries "fixing" that would be politically infeasible.
... im struggling with the realization that Liberalism the big idea is probably an afforded luxury ideal of the rich, as well as a runaway self-re-enforcing flywheel of wealth/advancement. I benefit from it, but fewer and fewer are going forward, while the US is simultaneously winning harder and harder. This is a nightmarish equation!
Why do you think it's A -> B and not B -> A? What factors of the US being permissive towards large income disparities do other nations lack that prevent them from paying equivalent salaries.
One specific thing I've heard which makes sense to me toward explaining the salary gap is the US tends to have at-will employment while other nations make it more difficult to fire people. I wouldn't personally classify as promoting income disparity though.
Of course it is.
Low-performers are fired from high-paid positions that high-performers keep. This translates performance disparities to income disparities.
> What factors of the US being permissive towards large income disparities do other nations lack that prevent them from paying equivalent salaries.
1. At-will employment
2. Employer-provided benefits
3. Smaller safety net
4. Lower taxes
5. Fewer business regulations
Actually, its due to a shortage of highly skilled labor/specialists relative to demand. Europe benefits from more advanced math and programming talent as a result of Eastern European and Russian/Ukraine labor availability. US immigration policy puts America at a disadvantage in this regard - something they are weakly trying to address here.
Sorry if that goes against your income inequality agenda.
Not sure why the barrier to using Eastern European talent would be appreciable different. (Time zones?)
> income inequality agenda
No agenda, just analysis.
If you increase income inequality, the top earners can earn more.
I mean, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are all EU members, which means they have freedom of movement - they don't even require any visa or work permit. Just show up in Western Europe and work. The same is currently temporarily true for Ukrainians.
Compare that to the extreme effort for them to get a green card in the US.
They don't necessarily have the skills to draw high US tech salaries either.
But for the vast majority, like you said, the US is extremely attractive.
I'm from Finland myself, I've been living in the US for some years, and I have no concrete plans to return. I've known many Finns who have tried the same, but most of them have returned to Finland, or at least to Europe. Most of them are highly educated professionals. It turns out the difference in standard of living is not that large. For most people, living closer to family and friends is more important. If they find a decent opportunity closer to home, they usually take it.
You can see the same effect with Finnish nurses. They could improve their standard of living significantly by moving to Norway. Probably more than software engineers moving to the US. It would be easy, because Norway is close, the culture is pretty similar, and Finnish citizens have a subjective right to live and work there. But few people actually do that.
But for anyone that is able/willing to move....
And it’s not like the climate in Europe isn’t verging on ethno fascism in several major state…
As someone who has similar thoughts, I'm not so sure. The EU has been trying for a while. Russia also puts quite a bit of effort into having an Internet that can operate separately from the US.
edit: That still doesn't explain to me why China and Russia don't have stronger pro-Linux (or something) initiatives. Even the middle powers could at least try to have some control over their technological infrastructure.
The requirements feel analogous to a staff/principal level role in the software industry, so just for comparison here's the compensation for these roles across the giants:
Microsoft (level 66): $390,707
Amazon (L7): $547,490
Facebook (E6): $610,713
Apple (ICT5): $497,780
Google (L6): $506,141
US Gov: $155,700 to start, with a max of $183,500 after 18 years (step increases are limited on a time basis)
The US government is trying to leverage AI by paying 30.4% the wage of the leaders in private industry. I just don't see how they're going to be effective in doing this.
Why not?
That fellowship is extraordinarily competitive and is filled with former FAANG folks.
The government can't afford these people straight up, so they slap "Presidential" or "White House" on a fellowship to make it more attractive.
And it is; a Presidential or White House fellowship is as much a resume maker as working at a FAANG or an Ivy League degree.
What value an employer would derive from seeing that on someone's resume is probably the same as with Google or Stanford: it shows they got in, with the known/assumed quality of the institution vouching for their capability.
Personally, I wouldn't want such a shallow individual working in my government.
Probably a lot. Can't raise a family in the Silicon Valley on that which makes people unhappy.
This is far more of a cut than say at CZI.
(Just be careful about "getting used to it" and ending up having to change your lifestyle if market conditions change.)
If you said $100k and a safety net (that actually works), I would agree with you.
For example, the government classifies a family of four with an income of $149,100 as "low income" in San Francisco, and thus eligible for government welfare benefits.[1]
The median house price in San Francisco is currently $1.3 million.[2]
An average 776 square foot apartment (which is rather small for a family of four) rents for $3,336 a month.[3]
[1] https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/grants-and-f...
[2] https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/housing-m...
[3] https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/sa...
Fairly significant depending on the location. Keep in mind that for Washington DC, the average cost of living required income is 91,388 for a family of four[0], or 76,894 after taxes.
This role pays $105k after taxes. One way to think about this is this means you have $2.3k per month in discretionary funds, versus 16.5k per month of discretionary funds for a big 5 job.
If you're considering retirement, you'll achieve your savings goals 7 times faster with big tech. That's a big difference in happiness.
If you're considering education for your children, you can afford private school or an ivy league education with big tech. With the government role you can't.
Certainly there are a select few who will look at this and be motivated to serve their country, but more and more what we're seeing is that patriotism is at a record low[1]. If we're looking to attract the best of the best, we're culling the selection pool greatly by underpaying significantly. Relying on patriotism and asceticism is a hard thing to bet on.
[0] https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/11001 [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/394202/record-low-extremely-pro...
- your 18 year figure is inaccurate, I know people who have made it to the top of the pay scale in half that time
- GS-15 step 10 is not the cap for a role like this one. this is scientific/technical expertise, which is 20% higher ($220,200). Not to mention awards.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-s...
I sure hope it doesn't mean the government will shape the future of AI development how they see fit.
Now is the time to start talking about it and taking it seriously though. If we keep avoiding trying to define it then we'll never be qualified to do so.
is the second top level bullet point out of 8 top level bullet points
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes "documents of the FVEY have shown that they are intentionally spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other"
Your comment is a cynical one. The very people qualified to define something like AI safety for the US population is...the US Government. Which is what they're doing. If you don't like some of what they're doing, there's many pathways to making sure your voice is heard, including voting for people who would explicitly support your policy preferences.
> Doesn't threaten the profits of entrenched gigantic megacorps.
> Doesn't threaten the status quo of the megawealthy.
> Doesn't threaten the highly-entrenched people in the government.
AI safety is about making AI "safe" for their pocketbooks.
No idea how reliable that site is, but it says Amazon.com sponsored 16,299, Amazon Web Services sponsored 5,056, and Amazon Development Center sponsored 2,119. So 23,474 in total.
Edit: I see a note that this is APPLICATIONS, not grants. Nevermind, that's probably not accurate.
Overall the claim that Amazon takes 25 percent of H1Bs is extremely incorrect.
But if I go into USCIS's H-1 data hub, I can find some information. For FY-2022 Amazon had 12.5k petitions approved. But drilling into the data we see that less than 4k of those were for _new_ petitions - the others were extensions of existing petitions. 4k out of the H-1B quota is less than 5% (there are 85k new H-1B visas per year). But even that is an overestimate because a new employee transferring to Amazon will require a new petition but won't count against the quota.
Overall, the best guess would be that Amazon use low single digits percent.
It is a meaningless website. Everybody and their dog knows that in the present political climate it’s practically impossible to change the immigration law. It’s only a remote theoretical possibility that the US could fix their immigration system.
By the way, we've seen it years ago:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27048048
* https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/03/whit...
Still coming soon? Kudos to OP for submitting this as a reminder.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
- On line 90 of the homepage, there is a single script called `document.createElement('main');`
- The website uses the `<picture />` tag to support multiple sources for images
- script.js on the website has ANSI art of the US flag (https://ai.gov/wp-content/themes/static/ai46/assets/js/scrip...)
UI: USWDS: https://designsystem.digital.gov/
Source: Wappalyzer
I cracked open an internal tool we had one of the big consulting firms build for us to see why it sucked so much. In one of the header elements they had hardcoded the URL for a QA site they built for a large car dealer. Fun stuff.
To quote Jeremy Irons playing Simon Gruber from Die Hard With A Vengeance, "HAH! God, I love this country!"
[1] https://ai.gov/ai-use-cases/
[2] https://ai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023%20Consolidate...
Looking into this further, I also learnt that in fact selling ai TLD has become a non-trivial part of Anguilla's GDP since chatgpt was released.
I'm even mildly annoyed that the website for the city I live in is under .org rather than under .${STATE_CODE}.us where it should be.
Source: I've registered .ai names since 2019. I use a 5 and 8 letter fairly common english word for two .ai domains; both were standard pricing originally, but comparable available domains are now >$10k. However, I could probably at best resell my domains for < $1k each, as resell value for .ai is hard once you use them. I guess investor dollars and being seen to do something might due the demand for these premium domain options.
In case you actually didn’t know [1].
Not arguing one way or another myself, I think it makes sense for it, at least for now, to be a joint office under DoD (like it currently is, according to your link). Just wanted to make it clear that CDAO is probably not what the grandparent poster had in mind when they made that comment.
Edit: wait are they actually AI generated?! That's pretty damn good if they are!
Beyond that, you'll want to show in your resume how you've delivered successfully and ideally in challenging circumstances, because working in the gov can be challenging. It will really vary depending on the job and agency.
The presidential innovation fellows are 1-year stints, and after the next election, there might not be a next role. Maybe a campaign? Maybe a consulting firm? Unclear.
Even if the parties don't flip - senior leaders churn through fast.
I love this attempt, but I can't imagine trying to be a mid-senior tech leader in an organization where, in 18 months, the next guy might be trying to actively tear down your work.
With the PIF it looks like they get spread around to various agencies, so I don't think a fellow from one cohort is likely to be assigned to the same agency and project as a previous one.
Agency inventories of AI use cases https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712177 (September 4, 2022 — 2 points, 0 comments)
National Artificial Intelligence Initiative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27048048 (May 5, 2021 — 202 points, 102 comments)
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/biden-unveils-us-governments...
The EO says you must inform the gov when you start the training the AI if it's a risk to public health, etc.
How would one determine if it's a risk? Who determines the risk (I assume the government).
So effectively that means the gov determines what is right/wrong, true/false. Not good.
I am not stating that having to inform the government when you're training models is right. It's an asinine way of thinking by people who have no idea what they're talking about and are severely out of touch. The laws they've enacted were based on fear, often propagated by OpenAI themselves. It is still their job to do that though.
It is not their job to say what is true or false. That's propaganda. They also do not have the right to enforce what you train your AI to say.
Would love to see the SC challenge this EO. It violates the 1A.
When an efficiency increasing technology comes along, things tend to grow and not shrink. Cars massively increased the number of people employed in transportation related and adjacent fields, to give just one example.
Social is another beast entirely. There's already a huge backlash there, and justifiably so.
2) Not only FOSS operating system, but FOSS firmware and microcode, and the hardware completely documented and published. Maybe a 100% sales tax on retail price of, and 25 year software service assurances on, products containing ANY kind of Universal Machine which fail to meet this? (Elect me Benevolent Dictator For Life and I will make this happen!)
3) Cryptography and cybersecurity basics need to be taught in public schools, just like resumé writing.
This group values individual liberty in financial matters (e.g., cryptocurrency), individual liberty in computing (e.g., AI), and individual liberty in manufacturing and firearms (e.g., 3D printers and semi-automatic guns). Interestingly, they also advocate for transparency regarding extraterrestrial life. It's an unusual stance, but it's part of their ideology. Of course many prominant democrats have led the charge on this, so it's probably not as cut and dry like the others. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were skeptical of mainstream narratives, but their views were diverse; they weren't strictly anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine, anti-mask, or pro-mask. They harbored various opinions, but universally believed that the experts' confidence was misplaced.
In contrast, the opposing side seems to advocate for stringent regulations on AI, cryptocurrency, and firearms. They seldom discuss extraterrestrials, primarily because they view themselves as experts, and in their eyes, the existence of aliens is implausible.
The "new moderate" recognizes the potential of AI to cause widespread unemployment but also understands its immense value. They believe that a balance must be struck. The new moderate acknowledges the benefits of cryptocurrency, especially in regions lacking a stable banking system, and the potential of smart contracts. However, they also recognize its misuse by terrorists and its frequent use in schemes that prey on uninformed investors. They believe that compromise is essential, and some form of regulation is inevitable.
Soon.
Soon...