This summer during late July, as a heat wave rolled over Providence, students from across the country assembled at Brown University to attend the Center for Technological Responsibility, Re-imagination, and Redesign (CNTR)’s inaugural Tech & Policy Summer School. An innovative new program and the first of its kind at a US university, the CNTR Summer School brought together undergraduate and graduate students in technical fields to learn how to translate their technical expertise into policymaking.
“At the CNTR, it’s part of our mission to train students to be clear communicators and strategic advocates for sound technology policy,” says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, the Director of the CNTR and Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at Brown. “This summer school is the perfect way to achieve that.”
Throughout the nine-day program, the inaugural cohort of sixteen students first spent three days at Brown hearing from experts in the field of technology policy and developing policy-shaping documents for lawmakers. During the second half of the program, the students caught a train to Washington D.C. and put their new skills into action, meeting with congressional offices and sharing their technical expertise on AI with legislators.
The establishment of this program at Brown is timely; just as the students arrived in Providence to embark on their week of learning and advocacy, the government released its National AI Action Plan, outlining how the US will approach AI policy. As part of their congressional office visits during the second half of the program, the students from the CNTR Summer School sought to find points of bipartisan collaboration with the legislative teams that will be overseeing the implementation of the AI Action Plan.
“We’re in an era in which public trust in science and policy literacy among scientists and the general public is diminishing,” says Serena Booth, the new Brown Computer Science faculty member who is the mastermind behind the Tech & Policy Summer School. “These students are joining us to directly contribute to an optimistic vision for the future role of scientists in the political process: they will go on to work in government, to conduct policy-literate technical research, to train other students, and to send future students to us to learn how to work with policymakers in a substantive capacity.”
In addition to its standing as one of the first US university-sponsored intensive student programs to train policy-literate technologists and to build bridges between these technologists and policymakers, one of the things that makes this program unique is its approach to developing the next generation of technology policymakers. “There’s been a lot of work recently in trying to teach existing policy-makers about AI, but there hasn’t been that much work trying to teach technical experts about policy,” says Booth, “This program is trying to address that gap and teach technologists about policy so they can effectively work with policymakers and legislators in impactful ways.”
The idea for the Tech & Policy Summer School emerged from Booth’s time as the leader of the student-run MIT Science Policy Initiative and her experiences working in the US Senate as an AI Policy Fellow. As a graduate student, Booth’s professional path was shaped by her opportunities to interact with governmental officials and learn how scientists and technologists can impact policy. She has since sought to bring those opportunities to rising students and expose them to diverse career paths.
Reflecting Booth’s belief in the importance of this kind of program is the astounding number of students who applied to the program in its first year. Over 270 undergraduate and graduate students from across the country applied to attend, though the program could only admit seventeen to its inaugural cohort. Throughout the selection process, Booth prioritized a diversity of expertise, regional representation, and policy interests. The students attending this year’s program represented a myriad of sub-fields within computer science, from physics to education to energy. They came to the program excited to explore diverse policy issues including AI and markets, social companions, and predictive policing.
“One of the aspects of this program that excited me was the opportunity to find a community of students with similar interests in policy but spanning a lot of different disciplines,” said Ro Encarcion, a program attendee and graduate student in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. “I'm getting so many ideas for my research right now, and it’s only been, what, three days? It's given me exposure that I probably wouldn't have gotten in my program otherwise.”
The speakers invited to talk with the students also constituted a wide range of expertise in technology policy, including Ollie Stephenson, the Associate Director for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Policy at the Federation of American Scientists, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Brown professor and former Assistant Director for Science and Justice in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jim Langevin, a former US Representative for Rhode Island.
“Each speaker has important experience and interesting perspectives to share with the students,” says Booth. “Alan Davidson, the former administrator for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, could speak about the lessons learned from expanding broadband access and how we might apply it to AI policy. Sayash Kapoor, an author and PhD student at Princeton, has been doing amazing work on the science communication front and he’s really breaking down barriers to helping people understand and wrestle with AI topics.”
In addition to learning from these experts, the students also developed “leave-behinds” that they then shared with congressional offices in the Capitol: single-page documents that explain why specific technology policies matter and why they will be important to lawmakers’ constituents.
Though these students are just learning about how to influence policy in D.C. and the perspectives they shared with policymakers may not lead to immediate change, the important part of this work is to “start the conversation and try to introduce this type of thinking into Congress,” says Booth. “We might see small immediate outcomes like support for the science funding budget and investment in this type of research, but the longer-term project is to start these larger conversations about what AI means for society and how we’re going to govern it.”
For the attending students, this innovative program has already begun to make its mark. “This Summer School was one of the best experiences I've had in grad school,” shared one student in an anonymous follow-up survey. “I learned so much about the intersection of science and policymaking, how to make a change in the tech industry through engaging with government, the responsible AI and AI legislation landscape, as well as all the opportunities available to me. It gave me an unprecedented level of access and exposure and it's definitely going to influence the next steps I take in my career.”
Booth hopes that students leave the program with an understanding of how the political process works as it relates to their science and that some of them might consider careers in government.
In the long run, Booth hopes that these students will take what they’ve learned in the program back to their communities and teach them how to do this type of work. “I think we can build a big network of policy-informed technologists using this structure,” she says, “That’s the dream.”