BRW February Lunch
Vanessa Rutledge, Independence Institute
Artificial Intelligence: Where Do We Go From Here?
The term “robot” was first used in 1921. By 1959, when the first industrial robotic arm began work in the General Motors plant lifting and stacking hot, die-cut metal parts, the populace started hearing that “robotics” would someday replace jobs. Known as “Unimate” this robotic arm could move up and down, following a program of up to 200 movements stored in memory.
Today it is common to see a Roomba, a robotic vacuum invented in 2002, guided by a mapped floor plan, roaming around sweeping up dust and debris throughout a home. To date over 15 million Roombas have been sold. Self-driving cars passed their first test in 2005 and are now numerous in cities like San Francisco.
Vanessa Rutledge, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of the Emerging Technologies Policy Center will give us an update on artificial intelligence. She will focus on current policy and the concerns of energy consuming data centers. She is also very well-versed on SB24-205, the Colorado Consumer Protections for AI. According to Governor Polis this law will “create a complex compliance regime for all developers and deployers of AI” through “significant affirmative reporting requirements.” In response Vanessa said this bill has gotten pushback from numerous key actors throughout the state. Discussion has begun about who should regulate the AI Industry—the federal government or a series of different regulations by the individual states.
Vanessa is from the tech world, where she worked with everyone from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and has extensive experience from programming to project management.
When she isn’t in front of a computer, you can find her traveling the world (a goal to see elephants wherever they live wild) or diving. She enjoys backpacking in the Rocky Mountains with her husband and Rottweiler.
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