Until mid-2023, artificial intelligence was something of a niche topic in Washington, largely confined to small circles of tech-policy wonks. That all changed when, nearly two years into Gina Raimondo’s tenure as Secretary of Commerce, ChatGPT’s explosive popularity catapulted AI into the spotlight.
Raimondo, however, was ahead of the curve. “I make it my business to stay on top of all of this,” she says during an interview in her wood-paneled office overlooking the National Mall on May 21. “None of it was shocking to me.”
But in the year since, even she has been startled by the pace of progress. In February 2023, a few months after ChatGPT launched, OpenAI’s leadership previewed its latest model, GPT-4, to Raimondo, who used it to write a speech she says was “alarmingly close” to her own prose. Today, tech companies continue to roll out new products with capabilities that would have seemed like science fiction just months earlier. As AI has rocketed up the government’s priority list, President Joe Biden made Raimondo point woman, charging her with controlling access to the
