U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of David Sacks, a billionaire high-tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist, to shape his administration’s efforts on artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency is raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest. But some researchers say the good news is that Sacks’s additional role leading the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) means Trump plans to retain the high-level panel.
“David will focus on making America the clear global leader” in both AI and cryptocurrency, Trump said as he announced the appointment on 4 December. Trump’s promise that Sacks would “safeguard free speech online and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship” is expected to translate into less regulation of the industry.
Naming Sacks as “AI czar” creates a new, part-time position not within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which is charged with overseeing federal innovation policy. Trump has yet to nominate an OSTP director; Sacks will serve as an adviser to the president but presumably from outside OSTP.
Sacks, 51, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University. After co-founding PayPal, he started several other companies and recently launched his own venture capital fund. He’s also a good friend of Elon Musk, who has been a key Trump adviser during the transition.
Those extensive business and personal ties could be problematic as Sacks tackles the controversial issue of AI regulation. Although he would not be a regular government employee as AI czar, Sacks would still be subject to federal rules preventing him from “participating in any matter that has a direct and predictable effect on their own financial interests.”
The potential conflicts of interest posed by Sacks’s financial dealings worry computer scientist Suresh Venkatasubramanian, who helped draft a 2022 “AI Bill of Rights” while working in OSTP under President Joe Biden.
“Much of his job description overlaps with OSTP’s role in technology and innovation,” Venkatasubramanian says. Yet unlike the OSTP director, he says, Sacks won’t receive the “scrutiny and transparency that would come if [he] were a Senate-confirmed position. I’m afraid that policies that benefit [Musk and Sacks] are going to be championed by this administration without any kind of appropriate oversight.”
Alondra Nelson, acting OSTP director under Biden and chief architect of its AI policies, says she doesn’t have a problem with Sacks not holding a full-time position within the government or at OSTP. Previous administrations, she notes, have named climate and public health czars who have been independent but worked collaboratively with OSTP and individual mission agencies. AI’s impact on society is so pervasive, she adds, that Sacks’s team “will have to include people who are in the government.”
Nor does Nelson believe his presence signals a downgrading of the role of OSTP in shaping federal R&D policy. “OSTP’s portfolio is vast, and there’s so much that needs to be done,” she says.
Nelson welcomes the news that PCAST will remain a vehicle for the president to receive advice from the research community. “That has historically been PCAST’s role, but its charter must be renewed,” she says. “At a time when so much is up in the air, this announcement is the first indication that the president-elect plans to continue that tradition.”
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-s-pick-ai-czar-signals-support-science-advisory-panel
