Ro Khanna Asks Witness: How Can AI Improve The Effectiveness Of Federal Employees?

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During Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) about using artificial intelligence to help federal employees.

Transcript

00:00I will now recognize Mr. Khanna for five minutes.

00:04Thank you Madam Chair. I appreciate the testimony.

00:08Mr. Shah, of course you have been such a successful

00:12entrepreneur and leader in Silicon Valley. I appreciate your

00:16being here. So I'll answer my first question

00:20to you. How do you think AI

00:24can help particularly government employees

00:28do better and be more effective

00:32in their work? Yeah, thank you.

00:36You know, the things

00:40that we're seeing in the private sector today with large organizations

00:44like Honeywell and like, you know, Northrop Grumman

00:48and the likes, they're benefiting from AI by making

00:52their employees be able to self-serve, get information that they're

00:56looking for and take actions across a variety

00:58of systems. You know, on any given

01:00day an employee might have to swivel their chair

01:02seventeen times to use different

01:04tools and that

01:06becomes a very wasteful

01:08portion of their day, sometimes many

01:10hours. And so to the extent that

01:12we can start to do that

01:14for federal workers,

01:16for all folks

01:18who work for this government, I think

01:20we're going to see some benefits. Benefits that will allow them

01:24to troubleshoot, to have better

01:26IT. Benefits that will

01:28accrue to them from an HR

01:30perspective in terms of

01:32getting the information they need, making the

01:34changes, the benefit selections that go

01:36into that. And also be able

01:38to work across different

01:40systems without having to be

01:42an expert. I think one of the things that

01:44you all have pointed out, there's hundreds

01:46hundreds of enterprise systems

01:48inside the government, and you may only

01:50touch it once a year, twice a year.

01:52And so if you can use AI as

01:54the overlay, kind of that front door,

01:56what you'll see is your

01:58staff and all the members

02:00of the federal government be able to

02:02navigate these systems,

02:04which can be very complex very easily,

02:06using the most intuitive interface

02:08in the world, which is language and

02:10conversation. So when it

02:12comes to that, you know, we've seen

02:14companies in our

02:16sort of world of private

02:18sector be able

02:20to reclaim, top five

02:22pharmaceutical was able to reclaim

02:2475,000 hours of employee

02:26productivity by deploying

02:28this kind of AI across

02:3044 languages. We've

02:32had a Fortune 500 aerospace

02:34manufacturer reclaim 75% of

02:36its support budget to be able

02:38to bring in

02:40technologies and leverage. So I think that

02:42you're going to see both happier

02:44employees and better outcomes

02:46while also making

02:48the government more efficient.

02:50And this is for anyone

02:54on the panel. How would

02:56you address people's concerns about

02:58AI displacing jobs

03:00being something

03:02that will lead to

03:04layoffs or

03:06people not being able

03:08to work?

03:10I'm happy to start. I think it's

03:12going to happen. And it's not going to be

03:14the jobs we think. It's going to be like

03:16low level lawyers. And

03:18that's, that's going to be hard. I mean,

03:20because you think about a lot of these

03:21professions are apprentice

03:22professions. Where do the senior partners

03:24come from? If the low level lawyers,

03:26the low level doctors are being replaced

03:28by AI. Some society has to think

03:30about whether there'll be new jobs

03:32in all previous revolutions. There have

03:34been new jobs to replace old jobs. This

03:36is going to be different. That's why you see a lot of talk

03:38about AGI.

03:40Sorry, about universal basic income.

03:42UBI. Like, is this going to be

03:44different? Where we need to figure out

03:46how to give people

03:48the ability to survive.

03:50And we don't know. We don't know a lot of these

03:52things. So those are very real fears.

03:54And I think we as society should think about

03:56them before they happen. We're not good at that,

03:58but we should.

04:00Congressman, just briefly, I just point out that

04:02there's been a lot of government reports

04:04on this issue and a lot of efforts about

04:06government retraining and so on and so forth. It's very hard

04:08to have a crystal ball to predict the jobs and skills that

04:10are needed in the future. But I'll just point out that

04:12just ten years ago, everyone was predicting a whole

04:14bunch of jobs that would be dislocated. The most famous

04:16one at number one was going to be radiologists.

04:18And just a couple weeks ago, the New York Times

04:20ran a piece to basically say, there's more radiologists

04:22than ever and they're utilizing AI to

04:24improve their jobs and free up time to do better

04:26things. And that's the story of technological

04:28change in sector after sector,

04:30is that we sometimes don't understand how

04:32complex human machine interactions work

04:34and actually can change jobs for the better

04:36and improve the employment output over time.

04:40I agree with being a technology optimist.

04:42I will say, though, that the unemployment rate

04:44for people between the ages of 21 and 29

04:48these days with a college degree is 15 percent.

04:52And so the challenge, I think, as Mr. Schnauer pointed out,

04:58is how especially at the entry level for people,

05:02particularly with college degrees, how are we going

05:04to create these jobs and how are they going to be able to use the tools

05:08of AI to be effective. But I appreciate all of your thinking on this

05:14and appreciate your being here for your testimony.

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