WASHINGTON - Today, the Committee on House Administration Committee held a hearing titled, "Artificial Intelligence (AI): Innovations within the Legislative Branch.”
Witnesses included:
Judith Conklin, Library of Congress (LOC); Hugh Halpern, Government Publishing Office (GPO); Taka Ariga, Government Accountability Office (GAO); John Clocker, Chief Administrative Office (CAO)
In case you missed it, here are the top takeaways:
1. AI can be leveraged in collecting Copyright Office registration records
Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (WI-01): "Can you walk through a little bit more related to the Copyright Office registration records and how AI can be leveraged in that space?"
Judith Conklin: "As I mentioned we do have a significant historical data that includes historical copyrighting, and we are currently forming experiment records...we have a current experiment with the Copyright Office on their historical records.
"We have a significant amount of historical data and we are currently experimenting with the Copyright Office historical data, and that will make the data more discoverable on those digitized records that exist today.
"The differences between digitizing the records and making them discoverable via AI is a machine can search much faster using AI technologies, and that's what our hope is that researchers can use that data for the research."
2. The CAO will tailor the NIST framework for challenging Legislative Branch environments
Representative Barry Loudermilk (GA-11): "Over the course of 2023. I understand there were many competing AI frameworks that agencies could have followed here in the House. We have a very complicated ecosystem, and we're in a situation where everyone is better off when we all row in the same direction instead of verbally rowing in different directions and ended up going in circles. Which, in fact, we're very good at, you know, in Congress. What framework did the CAO decide to use?"
John Clocker: "Mr Loudermilk I'm glad you recognize this is a very difficult environment sometimes. We are using the NIST framework for AI. We think it's a good framework. It's very thoughtful and we're going to tailor it for the challenging environment here in the House of Representatives.
"When we do that we will be working with this committee, we're gonna be working with the Sergeant at Arms, we're going to work with the Clerk, and other officers of the House because they all use the same framework when we adopt cyber policies."
3. Creating that "first draft" is ChatGPT's most common use within House offices.
Representative Mike Carey (OH-15): "Along the CAO's ChatGPT working group what has been the most common popular office use? And what do you think some of the biggest shortcomings are?"
John Clocker: "You've heard in other areas. It's really producing that first draft and then giving it to a human to go from there, first draft of testimony, first draft oft witness questions, first draft of a speech.
"A lot of times what people talked about it gets you over that writer, If you have writer's block, it's going to get you over that writer's block and it's going to give you a good framework to actually customize the Member's voice.
"The pitfalls is what we've heard here, right? Yet it does hallucinate, it's also very confident right that it knows what it's talking about. It sounds very confident, even though it is hallucinating, and so we will address that through training and how to use the tools effectively."