Machine learning and other varieties of artificial intelligence (“AI”) have become ever-present components of American life and central topics in technology policy debates. The events of the past six months have only heightened AI’s relevance – AI plays a critical role in hiring decisions, medical research, contact tracing, facial recognition, health-care decision-making, and other matters dominating the headlines. As AI has become more prominent, governments at home and abroad have taken note, developing guidance documents, principles, and codes of conduct representing the first steps toward a regulatory framework for AI technologies.

On Wednesday, July 29, WBK presented a free webinar on the ways in which AI is shaping our world, often to a far greater extent than we realize, and how policymakers are responding. Issues addressed in the presentation include:

• How does AI work, and why has it become so prominent?
• How have 2020’s unique challenges focused even more attention on AI’s capabilities and limitations?
• What have decision-makers at the state and federal level had to say about the policy issues arising from AI’s advance?
• How does the American approach differ from the approaches being pursued elsewhere?