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The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy spoke about the work her office has done during the Biden administration and the future of science and technology at the School of Media & Public Affairs on Tuesday.
Arati Prabhakar, who also serves as the science adviser to the president, discussed her three priorities in the White House — health, climate change and artificial intelligence. Prabhakar was invited by the University to give a presentation, which was followed by a question and answer session moderated by University President Ellen Granberg.
Granberg said Prabhakar was invited to speak at the event because GW’s focus on the intersection of science and policy parallels her career.
“Because of our location in the heart of the nation’s capital, GW can connect science, technology and innovation with law, policy and ethics like no other institution,” Granberg said. “We believe that collaboration is at the heart of all progress, and as we address some of our world’s most complex and vexing challenges, we remain dedicated to working together across sectors to accelerate that impact.”
Prabhakar’s presentation, titled “Postcards from the Future,” featured drawings depicting a “dark” and “bright” future for topics, like climate change and cancer research. Prabhakar explained that enacting necessary science and technology policy and regulations for issues, like artificial intelligence or climate change, or failing to do so, will determine how the future unfolds.
Prabhakar said the Biden administration has started initiatives, like their effort to work towards a cure for cancer and enacted policies to lower health care costs for Americans. Prabhakar said science and technology open the door to make things that seem “impossible become possible,” and said she was “over the moon” when Biden asked her to serve.
“I get to work for a president whose notion of America is a nation that can be described in a single word, and that word is possibilities,” Prabhakar said. “That’s how I think about my country, but it’s also very much about how I think about the role of science and technology.”
Prabhakar said steps the Biden administration has taken to address their three areas of focus include the establishment of a national drinking water standard, investments in cancer research, climate investments made through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the establishment of “guardrails” surrounding artificial intelligence.
An audience member asks Dr. Prabhakar a question. (Kris Park | Photographer)
When speaking about the different possible futures related to climate change, Prabhakar said a failure to address climate change will drive Earth toward uninhabitable conditions and said the urgent need to enact policy that prevents further damage to the environment.
“In this dark future, our planet becomes less and less habitable, and we go head long into a sixth mass extinction, which ultimately means that we lose the biodiversity that human life depends on,” Prabhakar said. “That’s a very grim future, and I think we all understand that the climate is going to keep changing.”
Prabhakar closed her presentation by laying out what she believes to be the most important responsibilities American citizens have regarding science and technology.
“The other important responsibility for our community is to use science and technology to change what’s possible so that we can move beyond today’s constraints into a different tomorrow, into a better tomorrow,” Prabhakar said. “This is how we contribute to the great American experiment.”
Following Prabhakar’s presentation, Granberg returned to the stage to facilitate a question and answer section. After fielding a question from Granberg about the U.S. as a leader in innovation, Prabhakar said future administrations should invest further in science to combat China’s growing investment in technological innovation.
“It is not a time to rest on our laurels,” Prabhakar said. “I look at what we’re doing, and it is still world-leading in every area, but we have got to keep investing in our people and in our infrastructure and doing the kind of bold path-breaking research that keeps us in that leadership position.”
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