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quietus [soylentnews.org] writes:

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently (June 5) held a hearing [house.gov] on, ahem, Artificial Intelligence, and its usage within the federal government.

We stand at the dawn of an intelligent age, a transformative period rivaling the industrial and nuclear eras, where AI—the new electricity, the engine of global change—is redrawing the very architecture of global power. It is clear that the nation that masters and fully adopts this foundational technology will not only lead but also write the rules for this new epoch. The breathtaking adoption of AI, exemplified by ChatGPT's rapid rise, underscores that for the United States, widespread federal adoption and deployment are not merely options but a strategic imperative essential for national competitiveness, national security, and effective governance.

(First witness, Mr. Yll Bajraktari, Competitive Studies Project.)

Today, AI is fundamentally transforming how work gets done across America's $30 trillion economy. AI solves a universal problem for public and private entities by transforming employee experience, providing instant support, reducing the toil of manual and tedious tasks, and allowing employees to focus on activities and jobs that provide significantly more value to the organization, leading to more efficient and effective organizations.

(Second witness, Mr. Bhavin Shah, Moveworks.)

AI has evolved dramatically in just a few years and today Generative AI holds enormous promise in radically improving the delivery of government services. The meteoric rise of the newest form of Generative AI— Agentic AI— offers the alluring opportunity to use AI for task automation, not just generating on-demand content, like ChatGPT and its rival chatbots. With these rapid developments, the government stands to realize massive cost savings and enormous gains in effectiveness in scores of programs while at the same time preserving the integrity of taxpayer dollars.

(Third witness, Ms. Linda Miller, TrackLight.)

Proposals to regulate AI systems are proliferating rapidly with over 1,000 AI-related bills already introduced just five months into 2025.27 The vast majority of these are state bills and many of them propose a very top-down, bureaucratic approach to preemptively constraining algorithmic systems. As these mandates expand they will significantly raise the cost of deploying advanced AI systems because complicated, confusing compliance regimes would hamstring developers—especially smaller ones.

Such a restrictive, overlapping regulatory regime would represent a reversal of the policy formula that helped America become the global leader in personal computing, digital technologies, and the internet.

(Fourth witness, Mr. Adam Thierer, R Street Institute.)

Than they made the mistake of calling their final witness, a man named Bruce Schneier. I'll leave you the pleasure of reading the full 31 pages of his testimony here [house.gov], but I'd like to finish with a couple of money quotes of his, as cited in El Reg [theregister.com]:

"You all need to assume that adversaries have copies of all the data DOGE has exfiltrated and has established access into all the networks that DOGE has removed security controls from ... DOGE's affiliates have spread across government ... They are still exfiltrating massive US databases, processing them with AI and offering them to private companies such as Palantir. These actions are causing irreparable harm to the security of our country and the safety of everyone, including everyone in this room, regardless of political affiliation."

Oddly enough, Mr. Schneier was the only witness not quoted, or even mentioned, in the wrap-up [house.gov] of that hearing. Maybe that wrap-up was AI generated?

Original Submission