The Challenges & Opportunities of Creating Policy in the New Age of Evolving Technology

Google has recently said its total greenhouse gas emissions climbed 48% since 2019, in large part due to the electricity needed for data centers that power artificial intelligence. As the company races to incorporate the emerging technology into its products, its energy demands and carbon footprint have increased over the last five years.

Google is only the latest example of an effort here in the U.S. to stay at the forefront of AI while simultaneously clashing with climate change and sustainability goals. One George Washington University professor says technology at the intersection of economic, security, and sustainability imperatives create both challenges and opportunities in creating effective policies moving forward. 

Nina Kelsey is an assistant professor of public policy and international affairs with a joint appointment to the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. Her research examines the role of interests in environmental policy making and negotiation. In particular, she focuses on how changes to interests can occur over time, especially via feedback, and how these changes shape environmental policy making at international, national, and subnational levels.

Kelsey co-wrote the piece, “The Challenges of Policy In An Era of Fulcrum Technologies,” published in the outlet War on the Rocks. In it, Kelsey and her co-author explore policy approaches around this trifecta of emerging technologies, which they call ‘fulcrom technologies.’

They write — 

“From this trifecta a new category of technologies — which we call fulcrum technologies — has emerged. These technologies are simultaneously critical to American security, prosperity, and environmental sustainability. This emerging policy environment presents many challenges and opportunities and is common to such disparate technologies as AI, biotechnology, semiconductors, and solar photovoltaics. Worryingly, existing U.S. policy approaches are not well adapted to dynamically balancing three critical imperatives at once.”

The full article can be found here.

If you would like to speak with Prof. Kelsey, please contact GW Media Relations Specialists Shannon Mitchell at [email protected] and Cate Douglass at [email protected].

-GW-