Sunday, July 30, 2023
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I know I have one more blog to write after this, but Week 9 is the last blog I’ll be writing from Amsterdam Hall, which definitely feels like an ending. This week has been full of endings in other ways – it was the last in-session week before Congress’s big August recess, but that meant it was an incredibly full week too.
On Monday, I was back in the office, doing a bunch of random tasks. I proofread and formatted some questions for the record (QFRs) that were going to be sent to the witnesses in the commercial space hearing. Our staff and members send QFRs to hearing witnesses when there isn’t time to ask those questions during hearings, or if witnesses would need a lot more information than they have on hand at the hearing. Once I was done with that, I shifted to helping prep for the subsurface science hearing (the one I wrote a statement for last week). One of the other interns and I, along with the two energy staffers, split all of the witnesses up and each took one. I was writing questions for a witness from DOE, and reading her written testimony really taught me a lot about the amount of funding they’ve been given from recent legislation like the BIL (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) and IRA (Inflation Reduction Act), and how agencies like the DOE are putting that funding to use fighting climate change and doing research on new technologies that can help.
Tuesday was technically a remote day for me, but I was on the Hill anyway, this time on the Senate side! I attended a (5 hour long!) event run by Microsoft Technet about AI. They had a bunch of panels with representatives from some of the companies Technet is involved with, and were generally discussing how companies use/expect to use AI, and recommendations for policy action in the future. There were definitely some good things to learn – NIST put out an AI Risk Management Framework, and everyone really seemed to like that (go NIST!), but there were also some frustrating comments too. A representative who was involved with the event came and spoke and basically argued that the Writers/Actors strikes were ridiculous because AI should just take over their professions. He argued that there’s a strong social safety net, and that writers and actors should just find other things to do as AI takes over – good to know he’s voted against measures that would provide people with loan forgiveness or fair housing! Just goes to show that you should pay attention to what your representatives are doing as well as what they’re saying. After the event, I met up with one of the staffers for Bill Foster (the PhD physicist in Congress) who specifically works on science policy, to chat with him about his experience and any advice he might have for me. I’ve really been learning how many people do science policy without a background in science, and I’m really glad I’ve stuck with physics. I tried to attend a Senate Judiciary hearing on AI that I needed to take notes on, but there must have been a 200+ person line waiting outside the hearing room, so I headed home finished up the notes from the morning instead. I was going to meet up with Jenna and Brynn at the Lincoln memorial to watch the Marine Band, but it started raining and the event was canceled! We still walked around in the rain for a bit, which was really nice :)
Before starting any work on Wednesday morning, I got coffee with Albert, a Committee staffer on a NSF fellowship. Unlike a lot of the people on the staff, Albert got a PhD in genetics before turning to policy, and I really wanted to know more about his experience. He gave me some really good concrete actionable advice that I know I’ll use in the future, as well as more personal motivation and introspection advice that will stay with me for a really long time. I’m glad I’ve gotten to meet people like Albert, and The subsurface science hearing – the last hearing of my internship – happened on Wednesday. It was really rewarding to sit in the hearing room, taking pictures and putting up name tags, while listening to Members of Congress make use of all the hard work I’d done preparing. It was definitely bittersweet watching the hearing end and having to head back to Ford from Rayburn, but it’s been a good run! And I definitely have more to do. I put together the binders for the markup on some Committee bills for Thursday, and started taking notes on the AI oversight hearing. I’m definitely going to talk more about this in my final presentation, but here’s another tip about paying attention to your representatives. If they’re talking about problems that seem suspiciously far away and unlikely to happen, it’s likely because they don’t want you paying attention to the real issues that are affecting real people right now! While we definitely need to focus on preventing future harms we know are coming, focusing on far-flung future sci-fi scenarios about rogue AI taking over the planet should never come at the cost of helping people who are rejected from jobs or organ transplant lists by AI because of racial bias built into the algorithms.
Thursday was a BIG DAY. I helped set everything up for the hearing in Rayburn before heading to the Congressional Auditorium to hear Nancy Pelosi speak in an Intern Lecture Series. She talked about her concern about the state of America’s democracy, as well as the hope that young people in public service give her. She spoke about how she got into politics to help underprivileged children get access to the resources they need, and that while not everything she does is directly related to that driving motivation, everything leads back in the long run to her passion for helping the next generation. Speaker Pelosi’s advice to all the interns: find your why. I really just appreciated getting to see her speak – she did an incredible job as speaker balancing her personal beliefs with the needs of leadership – and after watching almost every female scientist get edited out of Oppenheimer (something I’ve continued to be mad about over the past week) it was really meaningful to hear about Speaker Pelosi’s leadership and experience combating misogyny during her tenure as Speaker of the House. When that was over, I walked around the Capitol with Amber for a bit, and we sat in the House and Senate galleries and got to watch some of the floor proceedings, which was very cool. Though it might be difficult to believe, the afternoon was even more exciting. Most of the staff packed up for the day around 2:15 and took the metro to Farragut West before walking to the White House! We met up with our escort and spent a while outside going through security before going bowling in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with a bunch of the staff for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). I’d love to intern or work at OSTP in the future, and the staff were all great. I’m working on getting their contact information, but hopefully this will be a good connection for me! It was a lot of fun to spend time with everyone outside of the office too, even though I’m terrible at bowling. When I got back we finished up the RPG that MJ and Emily had written, which was amazing! We successfully saved all the cows from becoming spherical and had a great time doing it.
On Friday I worked remotely in the morning, and I actually worked from a bar nearby that turns their space into a “public living room” before they open at 4PM. I love public spaces!!! It was so nice and really just brought so much joy into my day. I headed into the office in the afternoon, but not to do work! We were having a CHIPS party/happy hour to celebrate all the good work everyone did during the session, our IT guy, Larry’s birthday, and for the one year anniversary of the CHIPS and Science Act, which my Committee was instrumental in creating. The CHIPS party entailed everyone bringing in multiple different kinds of chips, which Larry was very serious about. We brought them all into the conference room and assembled a tasting situation while everyone hung out chatting. There was a complex voting situation where we all pretended that we were the actual Committee voting on a resolution in Congress. The energy in the room was amazing. The CHIPS party was actually the first time this whole summer that the whole Committee staff had ever been in the same room and it really gave me such an immense sense of gratitude for every one of them.
I really tried to take advantage of this last weekend with everyone. Highlights of the weekend included wandering around Adam’s Morgan with Julia and Eva, going to the Piano Bar in Georgetown Saturday night when they had dueling pianos, and singing along with the whole bar and all my lovely intern friends, more wandering around Georgetown window shopping, and getting dinner with MJ and Tiffany. I love you guys and can’t wait for this next week together.
Ruthie Vogel