The United States could lose its position as the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) if we do not modernize our intellectual property system and strengthen our national security strategy. This emerged as the key theme of the fifth and final U.S. House AI Committee hearing on the ground, hosted in Washington, DC Last week. Experts from civil society, government, academia and industry have come together to discuss this and other important issues related to the use and regulation of AI.

U.S. Chamber President and CEO Suzanne Clark opened the hearing by noting several challenges ahead, such as cooperation between Russia and China to compete with the United States, the theft of intellectual property (IP) and foreign regulation. Regarding the Commission’s next policy recommendations, she noted, “You can count on the United States Chamber of Commerce to do something about this.” You can count on us not only to produce a white paper, but to actually turn it into action, into work.

Here are six recommendations for how the United States can be at the forefront of AI:

1. Modernize the intellectual property system

The US intellectual property system is an important tool for ensuring technological progress, but it needs to be modernized when it comes to emerging technologies like AI. Section 101 – the patentable subject matter section of the patent code – has not been reviewed in Congress since 1793.

“The patent code which [our founders] put in place was fantastic, but they hadn’t anticipated DNA processing, artificial intelligence, cryptography, software code and all the modern technologies of the next industrial revolution,” said Andrei Iancu, former deputy -Commercial Secretary for Intellectual Property and Director at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. “So to say that the patent system, at least from this point of view, needs to be modernized is an understatement. It’s absolutely crucial, and it’s an immediate national security issue.

Continuing the modernization of the intellectual property system, Iancu highlighted two key questions that need to be addressed: 1) Should AI algorithms be patentable? And 2) should an AI algorithm that innovates and creates new things be allowed to hold a patent? These issues need to be resolved to allow intellectual property to catch up with AI and for the United States to retain the leadership of AI in the world.

In his testimony, Christian Hannon, a patent attorney who currently works in the USPTO’s Office of Policy and International Affairs, noted that the agency “has engaged with the innovation community and experts in AI to promote the understanding and reliability of intellectual property rights as they relate to AI technologies.

Maintaining American leadership in emerging technologies is a priority for the USPTO, which recently convened a partnership on AI and emerging technologies and published a study on the growth of AI, as evidenced by data on patents. “To sum up, we cannot sustain innovation around AI without strong and reliable intellectual property rights, which are essential to the prosperity of our innovative nation,” Hannon said. “To grow our economy and remain globally competitive, we need to promote invention and patenting more than ever, including in underserved communities.”

2. Treat Intellectual Property Theft as a National Security Threat

The theft of American intellectual property is also a critical national security issue. In 2019, China overtook the United States in filing international patents. In 2020, the country again overtook the US lead of 17%.

“I think it’s because they’re stealing our intellectual property and copy-pasting into the patent system,” said Brian Drake, federal chief technology officer at Accrete AI Government. “We must treat intellectual property as a national security asset.”

3. Strengthen AI as a National Security Priority

When it comes to competition on AI, maintaining leadership on technology is a national security imperative.

“When I think of this space from a national security perspective, I think this is a broad spectrum attack on our country,” Drake warned. “I am talking about all of our adversaries’ instruments of national power directed at all of our instruments of national security and our centers of economic power. That means their intelligence apparatuses, that means their direct and indirect financing apparatuses, that means their commercial military integration activities. All of these are geared towards artificial intelligence. And make no mistake, it’s about winning the future war.

“The implications for our national security when China or any other authoritarian model sets the standards and rules for emerging technologies are quite serious,” said Yll Bajraktari, CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project and member of the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC). . . “Technology leadership means setting the rules for their use, controlling the infrastructure for their use, building the industries of the future, and building the best armies to protect our societies.”

“The first-mover advantage in technology is huge,” Bajraktari continued. “It is important for our country to be ahead of China because it is a competition of values. We want these technologies to be developed according to our standards and our ethics, which is the antithesis of how China uses them against its citizens, through surveillance, oppression of their minority groups.

4. Increase US strategic advantage in AI

American values ​​are both an effective strategy and a competitive advantage in AI.

“I would say it’s not that we have to be a leader, it’s that we have to maintain our leadership because our brand is trust,” said Miriam Vogel, president and CEO of EqualAI and president of the NAIAC. “I think what we have that some of our competitors don’t have is faith that our AI does what it says it’s going to do, that it’s effective and inclusive.

Compared to other countries where the focus is solely on data retention, the US also emphasizes inclusion, which Vogel sees as a competitive advantage. “The more people included as part of creating our AI, the more people can benefit from our AI,” she said.

“In the face of digital authoritarianism, the United States must present a democratic model for the responsible use of AI for national security,” Bajraktari stressed. “Public trust will depend on justified assurances that our government’s use of AI will respect privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights.”

5. Make sure AI is effective for decision making

Without proper foresight and presentation, machine learning results may not be reliable or used effectively in the military.

“If it’s not actionable, if it’s not relevant, if it’s not timely, and if it doesn’t contain contextual information…[analysts] won’t talk about it,” said Benjamin Harvey, Founder and CEO of AI Squared. “It means there are people on the ground who aren’t getting the information they need because of an organization’s inability to deliver it in a way they feel they trust. in what they report.”

This discrepancy had a personal impact on Harvey. During the hearing, he spoke of how his brothers were affected both mentally and physically by their deployments. “All I could think of was when I was at the NSA, I was the head of data science, and I couldn’t get the results of our data science into applications fast enough. And all I could imagine is that if we could have done that, we could have prevented some injuries and saved lives, not only to my brothers, but to other military combatants who were in hostile territories.

6. Win the talent contest

Maintaining AI leadership for the long term means winning the competition for talent around the world and cultivating new talent at home.

“The bottom line is that our national security depends on our ability to attract, nurture and retain technical talent, and without those core talent pools, everything else is kind of irrelevant,” said Colin Carroll, director from Applied Intuition. “If we adopt nativist immigration policies or even the status quo that we have now, I really predict that by the end of the decade, the transition of the power base of AI education and research to China and India [will] be complete. And it’s going to be really, really difficult, if not impossible to overcome.

Instead, Carroll stressed that “we need immigration reform, ideally bipartisan, that prioritizes incentives for foreign talent to attend school, conduct research, work here and to become true American citizens”.

To address the talent gap in government, Bajraktari called for the creation of new digital talent pipelines and the broader expansion of existing programs.

“We recommended creating the National Digital Reserve Corp,” he said. “All military services have a reserved corps. We talk to a lot of technologists in Silicon Valley. Many of them want to help our government, but they don’t want to quit their jobs in the private sector. So what is the middle path you can create for them? You create a reserve program, where they give our government two weeks a year of their services, and that will allow you to have high-end access to the best technologies.

And after?

To explore critical AI issues and provide independent, sustainable, and bipartisan recommendations to policymakers, the US Chamber AI Commission held five on-site hearings in Austin, TX; Cleveland, Ohio; Palo Alto, California; London, UK; and Washington, DC. The Commission’s final recommendations will be released in fall 2022. Get the latest news on our website at americaninnovators.com/aicommission/