“There was someone on the Ways and Means Committee that came to that program, now she’s the US Trade Representative and a member of Biden’s cabinet,” said Wald, presumably referring to Katherine Tai. That led to the first AI-focused boot camp in 2019. “Someone on the Intelligence Committee told one of my colleagues something like, ‘if you can take us on a one to 10 scale from a three to a five in terms of general knowledge on this topic, you’ve done the nation a service.” At the time, “there was just this lack of knowledge on cyber,” said Wald. Stanford HAI isn’t new to the “boot camp” concept to educate Congress - they held their first one in 2014, which focused on cybersecurity.

“It’s more to give them the tools so that they can have the critical thinking and analysis that would come from a lot of this.” The first Stanford AI boot camp was held in 2019 “For us, it’s not trying to inform people and tell them what to do,” Wald told Venturebeat in an interview. That means teaching Senators, Representatives and their staffs about everything from large language models (LLMs) and open source AI to AI safety, security and ethics issues.įor example, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is already planning a crash course in AI for Senators this fall, which will include at least nine forums with top experts on copyright, workforce issues, national security, high risk AI models, existential risks, privacy, transparency and explainability, and elections and democracy.Īccording to Russell Wald, Stanford HAI’s managing director for policy and society, the boot camp is about equipping participants with the information they need to think critically about regulating and governing AI. As Senate and House move on AI regulation, education is keyĪs the Senate and House race to catch up to the speed of AI development and tackle possible regulation, they have a lot to learn about these complex technologies, as well as their benefits and risks. Participants receive a Stanford University certificate of completion at the conclusion of the boot camp. It includes field trips to Stanford labs for interactive experiences, as well lectures by Stanford University professors and leaders from Silicon Valley. The three-day course will school congressional attendees about all things artificial intelligence - with sessions unpacking what AI means for issues such as international security, the future of work, bias, privacy, and healthcare. AI may be one of the few subjects capable of uniting Democrats and Republicans in Congress - at least in terms of their shared desire to learn more about the fast-moving technology. Next week, congressional staffers from both sides of the aisle in the House and the Senate will come together on Stanford University’s bucolic, 8,000-acre California campus - not to admire the campus’ Mission Revival and Romanesque architecture, or to party, but to attend the Congressional Boot Camp on AI, run by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI).

Stanford recorded lectures