In an online event sponsored by Empower AI (and other sponsors) on October 6th, 2022, Lynne Parker, former White House official, discussed her contributions and concerns for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in America. A sharp focus on artificial intelligence education and workforce training and coming up with concrete guidelines for how AI should be procured are needed to maintain American leadership in AI, said Lynne Parker, Founding Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office (NAIIO).

Lynne Parker was responding to questions asked by Aaron Boyd, Senior Editor, Nextgov in her opening keynote during Defense One’s and Nextgov’s bi-annual series “Genius Machines” recently. “We need to get busy in a couple of areas. One is in education and workforce training and the other is in an approach to procurement. In education and workforce training, we need career pathways in the federal government so that we can get more experts in government,” said Lynne who for four years (2018-2022) served various roles in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), including Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and Assistant Director of Artificial Intelligence.

Talking about OSTP, Lynne said an important role of OSTP in the White House is to define our priorities for investments in R&D. “As a nation, certainly the role of the White House is to make sure we are investing in the right areas, prioritizing the right areas of AI.” According to her one way of fostering and moving governance along and actions that agencies should perform are through executive orders.

“Under my time there were two. One was on maintaining American leadership in AI signed in 2019 and the second was on promoting the use of Trustworthy AI in the federal government which was signed in at the end of 2020,” Lynne further said. Another way at the WH and through OSTP, she says, you can really direct agencies to take particular actions that help ensure that the nation continues to lead the world in a wide variety of AI related activities but also to look at what the federal government itself is doing.