Here in New York City, the UN General Assembly has just wrapped up front and center this year the role of AI in global policymaking.
Just last week, we learned that major US AI firms are signing deals with several governments in Europe.
AI related digital transformation is front and center.
Joining me today is Joseph Farzak, co-founder and president of Helios, the first AI native platform for policy, regulatory, and legal.
In tracking change.
Now Joseph is a former US State Department policy adviser, a lawyer by training.
He's worked on Middle East diplomacy and conflict resolution and now leads efforts to bring AI into the heart of public policy.
Joseph, welcome.
Thank you so much for joining me.
It's great to be with you, Rey.
Well, I do want to get your perspective.
How is AI finding its way into everyday government as well as foreign policy?
Well, Governments are adopting AI tools very rapidly.
It's happening today.
We're seeing it in departments across our government here at the federal level, state level, even in cities.
We're seeing it across ministries everywhere in the world, and I think that's been on display here at the 80th General Assembly.
So that's been very encouraging because it shows that leaders are interested in experimenting with technology to aid their diplomats in order to have them move faster.
To be more efficient, be more nimble.
I can tell you based on my experience in the State Department, we didn't have tools that were learning from your previous outputs that were learning from outputs and work products from other colleagues and offices, etc.
We now have those tools.
We have built those tools, so you're able to now have models learn from your previous outputs and ingest all of that context with other data that's available and therefore, Allow you to come up with better work product and allow diplomats to then focus on the things that do matter to them being at the negotiation table, developing relationships, and a lot of the background work is just more powerful, and those tools are very effective in this space.
And of course when we're talking about government as well as lawmaking, accuracy is key here.
And given your background, you understand this more than anyone's.
So tell us more about this.
Well, you're very right, it's a trust first vertical traceability, accountability, veracity in these outputs is incredibly important, and the more that we can get that reliability up, the better.
We're looking at all kinds of models and we're training our models on different data sets so that you can have a better output on the reliability function.
Let's move to Helios, the company that you co-founded.
Tell us about the work you're doing there.
Well, we're of course building AI tools for people in public policy again at all levels and across the globe.
We're focused on ingesting the right amounts of data in the right places and building models that are very reliable so that people can have trustworthy outputs.
And help them in their very sensitive jobs.
We're very pleased with the direction everything is going.
We're pleased with the pilots that we've launched, and there's been a lot of traction in the space, and we're continuing that push.
And finally, Joseph.
So can you give us the current and also recent example of a policy shift where you think Helios would have been of great value.
An example.
Well, I can tell you that I've received a lot of calls in the last several days on the H-1B visa situation.
That is a good example of a policy making decisions that has all kinds of ramifications in the industry, so.
You know, companies and governments need to have anticipatory analysis tools that help them think through short term and long term implications of decisions that can have tremendous effects, and that's that's just one example, but really it's a wave of change.
Comes every single day that entities have to grapple with, and that governments are contemplating.
We're talking about over 250 regulatory changes across something like 750 regulatory agencies globally.
I mean the sheer volume of of that shift in policy.
It is tremendous and those affect the interests of individuals, human beings, of organizations, of entities, nonprofits, companies, etc.
So there are plenty of examples I think we can come up with.
But overall, you know, I would say that entities need to be able to anticipate better, react faster, and have better tools to help them be equipped for each of those scenarios.
OK, Joseph, thank you so much for joining me and thank you for sharing all of your insights and your perspective.
It's good to be with you.
