BSA | The Software Alliance brought together government officials, industry executives, and researchers to discuss top-of-mind tech issues at TRANSFORM, BSA’s inaugural policy summit, in Washington last week.
Over 100 guests heard directly from US administration officials, members of Congress, and business leaders at global companies like Adobe, Alteryx, Box, IBM, OpenAI, Recorded Future, Salesforce, and SAP. Conversations focused on identifying ways stakeholders can deepen their collaboration to help solve key digital policy questions surrounding AI, cybersecurity, sustainability, and more.
Watch a recording of the full summit here and find recaps of the discussions with video below.
Digital Transformation Reshaping the Economy and Society
BSA CEO Victoria Espinel welcomed the crowd with opening remarks illustrating how software is fostering digital transformation across the globe.
Advancing Data-Driven Solutions in the National Interest
Watch Michele Flournoy, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at WestExec Advisors, in conversation with Alteryx CEO Mark Anderson on how sharing data is critical to developing the infrastructure needed to support and grow businesses worldwide.
On leveraging data to make better decisions in government: “When you build a workflow, and you can publish that workflow to hundreds or thousands of different colleagues, being able to share data and allow for proper guardrails and securitization of that data. Being able to share data so that you can automate and make data-driven decisions much faster.” – Mark Anderson.
Meeting the AI Moment: How to Set Strong and Workable Rules
Alex Givens, President & CEO at the Center for Democracy & Technology, moderated a panel conversation on why and how artificial intelligence needs to be regulated.
From left to right: Congressman Jay Obernolte, US House of Representatives; Christina Montgomery, Chief Privacy and Trust Officer, IBM; Leah Perry, Chief Privacy Officer & Head of Global Policy, Box; Nubiaa Shabaka, Global Chief Cybersecurity Legal and Privacy Officer, Adobe; and Dr. Charles Romine, Associate Director for Laboratory Programs, National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Department of Commerce.
On what policymakers should be doing to regulate AI: “The role of policymakers I’d like to see is to create enabling frameworks for regulations. First, essentially look at what regulations are out there in place today and then fill gaps with regulation that addresses the harms – many of which we’ve talked about today – in terms of bias and inclusion.” – Christina Montgomery.
How Box’s new generative AI product has been received by consumers: “Recently, we launched the Box AI product offering. And the feedback we received prior to launch and just evaluating where customers were at… people were thrilled about the aspect of integrating, whether it’s OpenAI or another generative AI technology, into our product offering and to be able to leverage that knowledge.” – Leah Perry.
On how to counteract future misinformation in generative AI: “We 100 percent agree that the future, we believe, is bright, and to counteract this misinformation is to really have this content authenticity and change our entire mindset.” – Nubiaa Shabaka.
Has AI Reality Caught Up With AI Hype?
BSA CEO Victoria Espinel led a conversation with OpenAI General Counsel Jason Kwon on how ChatGPT was developed, how AI should be regulated, and the future of AI.
On how AI is transforming businesses: “A couple of use cases come to mind. One is you might have a company with a large knowledge base; instead of people having to look up information, you can put an AI system on top of it that then will be able to understand what you have inside the organization, and you can interact with the organizational knowledge that can make everybody more productive.” – Jason Kwon.
Implementing the National Cyber Strategy
BSA CEO Victoria Espinel asks Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden about the priorities in the National Cyber Strategy, like security by design and regulation harmonization, and how ONCD is working with Congress and others to shape requirements moving forward.
On what’s next for implementing the US National Cyber Strategy: “You’ll see a similar guidance coming out soon with priorities, this time pegged to the National Cyber Strategy. So, the first spring guidance was pegged to the executive order; the next one that you see would be pegged to the National Cyber Strategy.” – Kemba Walden.
Securing Our Shared Future Through Cyber Intelligence
Bob Costello, CIO at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, US Department of Homeland Security, sat down with Stu Solomon, President of Record Future, to talk about modernization in CISA and how the department is working to implement best practices.
On building the cyber workforce: “We’re recruiting a lot more junior-level people that are coming in with different thought processes. We’re also trying to engage a lot more with our private-sector partners to understand capabilities there on the tools that we purchase. Often, in government, you purchase a tool and use 10 of the capabilities. We want to make sure we’re using 100 percent of those capabilities so that we’re getting the best value and that we’re doing the best we can to defend our systems.” – Bob Costello.
AI and IP Rights: Addressing Risks and Opportunities
Garrett Levin, President and CEO at the Digital Media Association, moderated a conversation with BSA’s Aaron Cooper and Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel at the Motion Picture Association, about the impact of generative AI on copyright law and how input data can be used to train algorithms.
On applying IP law to AI: “I think a lot of people would argue that there is potentially case law that would apply in the context of the input side, but then you have to deal with that output because you’ve gotten to the point of okay, training the AI, but we haven’t gotten any really definitive case law either way on what happens with the output addition.” – Karyn Temple.
On the applications of AI: “Often when we talk about copyright and generative AI, we’re thinking about what kind of output in the creative community it can help to develop. But there are really exciting developments in generative AI around pharmaceutical drug design, around manufacturing, around testing different forms of solids for different material science purposes and conductivity. There are so many applications that I think are really exciting that are going to enable scientists and manufacturers to expand what they’re doing in really effective ways.” – Aaron Cooper.
Public, Private, and International Cooperation to Achieve Sustainability Goals
BSA’s Matteo Quattrocchi moderated a panel with Executive Vice President of Government Affairs at Salesforce Eric Loeb and Senior Advisor & Managing Director for Energy, Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, US Department of State, David Livingston, on the importance of collaboration between government, business, and civil society to help create sustainability solutions that are achievable.
On putting enterprise tools to work for sustainability: “We developed, through our own technology, at first our own version, of what’s now been called Net Zero Cloud, which was an automated way from the sensors, sources, and processes to pull, analyze, and visualize your data so you can see where you are and how you can act on it. We pretty quickly realized that’s interesting, probably for our customers who we want to help along the way.” – Eric Loeb.
On how government and industry are working on sustainability: “I think many of these architectures to draw on the private sector and to work on the public-private collaboration are going to be well-suited to address some of the gaps we have.” – David Livingston.
Enabling a Sustainable Future Through Digital Transformation
CEO of ImpactROI Steve Rochlin led a lunchtime conversation with the Hon. Carlos Curbelo, Co-Chair, Climate Solutions Foundation, and Kevin Richards, Vice President and Head of US Government Affairs at SAP, on how digital transformation the sharing of data is pivotal to companies and civil citizens mitigating climate change.
On SAP’s climate goals: “By the end of 2023, we’ll be carbon neutral as a company, and that’s two years before our original goal of 2025. We also moved up our target to be a net zero company by 2030 and moved that up from 2050… To get to the goal of zero emissions and zero waste and zero inequality, technology is really fundamental to that core, and we really see sustainability as the next frontier in terms of digital transformation.” – Kevin Richards.
On leveraging enterprise tools for policymaking: “Lawmakers and leaders are every level at cooperations, NGOs, are going to have access to so much valuable information. It’s completely revolutionary and it’s going to make us so efficient… [data] needs to be embraced because it’s going to help make the world function better. And from a policy lens, it’s really going to help us make fact-based decisions. And a lot of these debates about what’s real and what’s not and what’s causing damage to the planet and what’s not – those will all be put to rest by hard quantifiable information and data that digital tech promises to offer and is already doing as SAP does for its clients all over the world.” – Hon. Carlos Curbelo.
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Thank you to all those who participated, attended, and tuned into TRANSFORM.
