The Justice Department Gets a Chief AI Officer

Princeton professor and technology law researcher Jonathan Mayer has been appointed as the Justice Department's first chief AI officer. The Verge reports: Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that appointing an AI officer was important for the department to "keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments." One of Mayer's responsibilities will be to build a team of technical and policy experts around cybersecurity and AI. Mayer will also serve as the department's chief science and technology advisor and help recruit tech talent.

Mayer held technology roles in government before his new Justice Department gig, according to his bio in Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. He served as an adviser on technology law and policy to Vice President Kamala Harris when she was still in the Senate. Mayer was also the chief technologist in the enforcement office of the Federal Communications Commission.

Seems like a great guy!

[ls671]

Seems like a great guy! He invented browser fingerprinting then preached to implement "do not track" HTTP header which is just like "robot.txt" so most businesses can just ignore it. Then "he posted on illegal web tracking businesses". Makes sense!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Ah, look. Here comes Fate.

[geekmux]

Ah, nothing quite like opening the Wiki entry on our AI future chief directive officer, and finding someone too fucking young to remember what Skynet is destined to become.

Humans. Bunch of damn Irony junkies I tell ya..

Where the Chief Dogecoin and Chief Tulip officer?

[guruevi]

As with every government position, once created it canâ(TM)t disappear anymore. Also, why is this under DOJ and not CISA and how does it not need Congress approval to be created?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Appointments Clause [wikipedia.org]

it would be great if the conservatives who claim to love the constitution so much actually read it

Re:

[Tontoman]

This is as mandated by Executive Order of the President: https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri... [whitehouse.gov] Every Article II (Executive Branch of Constitution) agency (Like the Department of Justice) is acquiring an Chief AI Officer. See also https://www.aol.com/york-ag-as... [aol.com]

Re: Where the Chief Dogecoin and Chief Tulip offic

[guruevi]

Executive action still needs funding. Congress controls the purse, an EA simply directs how to implement, not how to fund entirely new agencies from whole cloth.

Re:

[nomadic]

Congress doesn't appropriate money for each single position one-by-one. DOJ gets money appropriated for salaries generally.

Re:

[guruevi]

They do for new positions generally. You can't just invent a new agency and appropriate salary towards it.

Re:

[nomadic]

This is not a new agency.

Re:

[nomadic]

"As with every government position, once created it canâ(TM)t disappear anymor"

Yes, it will suck when nobody uses AI anymore and the position is still there.

Good luck.

[data oyster]

He served as adviser to Kamala. So he had someone inside pull the strings in the hiring process. That is the ONLY way you get hired at Club Fed, and once you are hired, you get dumbed down irreversibly until you get out. Let's hope that he goes after AI job hiring. It clearly and demonstrably discriminates against competency all too often. But, it's an election year after all, and if the AI hype continues, the stock market continues to line the pockets of the People That Matter.

so what

[groobly]

All this job is a spot in an org chart that actually does nothing. Nice gig, free money, no responsibility.