one day in In March 2023, Arati Prabhakar brought a laptop into the Oval Office and showed Joe Biden the future. Six months later, the president issued a sweep decree which set a regulatory course for AI.
All this happened because ChatGPT stunned the world. In an instant, it became abundantly clear that the United States needed to accelerate its efforts to regulate the AI industry…and adopt policies to take advantage of them. If the potential advantages were unlimited (a Social Security customer service that works!), the potential disadvantages were just as unlimited, such as floods of disinformation even, according to some, the extinction of humanity. Someone had to demonstrate it to the president.
The position went to Prabhakar, as she is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and holds the status of chief advisor to the president on science and technology; she had already methodically raised awareness among senior officials of the transformative power of AI. But she also has the experience and bureaucratic savvy to make an impact with the most powerful person in the world.
Born in India and raised in Texas, Prabhakar holds a doctorate in applied physics from Caltech and previously led two US agencies: the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. She also spent 15 years in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist, including as president of Interval Research, Paul Allen’s legendary technology incubator, and was vice president or chief technology officer at several companies.
Prabhakar took up his current position in October 2022, just in time for AI to dominate the agenda, and was instrumental in its removal. this 20,000 word decree, which imposes safety standards, spurs innovation, promotes AI in government and education, and even attempts to mitigate job losses. She replaced biologist Eric Lander, who resigned after an investigation concluded he ran a toxic workplace. Prabhakar is the first person of color and the first woman to be appointed director of the office.
We chatted at the kitchen table in Prabhakar’s Silicon Valley apartment — a simply decorated space that, if I remember correctly, is very different from OSTP’s offices in the ghostly, intimidating executive office building of Eisenhower in Washington DC. Fortunately, the Californian ambiance prevailed and our conversation felt very unintimidating, even comfortable. We talked about how Bruce Springsteen was featured in Biden’s first ChatGPT demo, his hopes for a semiconductor renaissance in the United States, and why Biden’s war on cancer is different from every other president’s war on cancer. I also asked him about the status of the vacant position of chief technology officer for the country – a single person, ideally quite geeky, whose entire job revolves around the technological issues driving the 21st century.
Steven Levy: Why did you sign on for this position?
Arati Prabhakar: Because President Biden asked for it. He sees science and technology as enabling us to achieve great things, and that’s exactly what I think of their purpose.
What kinds of big things?
OSTP’s mission is to advance the entire science and technology ecosystem. We have a system that follows a set of priorities. We spend a lot on R&D in healthcare. But public and corporate funding is largely focused on pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and very little on prevention or clinical care practices, things that could change health rather than fight disease. We must also confront the climate crisis. For technologies like clean energy, we’re not doing a great job of taking research findings and turning them into impact for Americans. This is this country’s unfinished business.
