By Will Hurd and Robin Kelly The United States is the global leader in artificial intelligence. We have an innovative private sector, world class universities and remain the top destination for international AI talent. However, American leadership is no longer guaranteed. In fact, Eric Schmidt and Bob Work, the chairman and vice chairman of the congressionally established National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), wrote, "[T]he United States is in danger of losing its global leadership in AI and its innovation edge." The Chinese Communist Party is the biggest threat to America's leadership in this realm. The CCP's strategic aims include becoming the next world power by 2049 and the global AI leader by 2030. In China, AI fuels techno-authoritarianism. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2019 report found that the CCP is positioning Chinese firms to become the next AI leaders through "government intervention, market structure and construction of AI enabling infrastructure." Through congressional action, we can sustain American leadership and continue fostering innovation. As the former chairman and ranking member of the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, we learned three things: The federal government can accelerate innovation; use of modern technology within federal departments and agencies empowers public servants to create value for the taxpayer; and, rapid technological change creates societal trade-offs. We've used these three findings to inform and shape a national AI strategy that allows America to take advantage of technology in a responsible and effective way that reflects our values. Our national AI resolution recognizes the AI accomplishments of the Obama and Trump administrations, asserts Congress' critical role in advancing AI in America, identifies the need for a comprehensive AI strategy, and proposes four pillars to guide that strategy, informed by our ongoing collaboration with the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). The first pillar, workforce, is critical because AI will affect all Americans either in the workplace, at home, school or in their private lives. We must enable our workforce to build and know how to use AI systems, but currently the U.S. faces an AI talent gap, limiting our ability to advance AI both outside and within government. Since AI will reshape the way we work, the federal government should prepare the workers and students of today for the jobs of tomorrow. For mid-career workers, the federal government should rethink the way it looks at education, transforming it into a lifelong learning process. Tools to promote flexibility in the workforce include last-mile training, industry-sponsored credentials and incentivizing skills-based hiring. For students, the federal government should promote educational equity and opportunity for computer science and STEM. We can do this by up-skilling our current teachers, increasing access to broadband and expanding our existing technology programs. National security is the second pillar of our strategy because, as the NSCAI believes, AI will change the way we defend America, generate intelligence and fight wars. We should focus and invest research dollars into human-machine teaming, trustworthiness and ethics. Our military and intelligence community should be able to trust their AI systems, and all Americans should trust that those systems will be used ethically. American allies have been pivotal to the last 70 years of U.S. leadership in international security. When it comes to incorporating AI, that cannot change. We must collaborate with our allies on AI technologies and make those systems interoperable where appropriate. Our third pillar is research and development because the federal government must continue supporting revolutionary technologies, like AI, as it did with the Internet. The first step is increasing our federal funding for AI R&D. In recent decades, our R&D expenditures have stagnated while China's have quadrupled. Computing resources and data are essential ingredients to AI research. The federal government should increase access to existing supercomputing resources for AI researchers and build on the Open Government Data Act to release more datasets. Our fourth pillar is pivotal to ensuring American values are reflected in this emerging technology. It is ethics. Questions about fairness cannot be defined mathematically. The trade-offs that AI systems will create should be reflective of American values, and Americans' elected representatives in Congress must be involved. Though AI technology is new, questions about fairness are not. We should use existing regulations as a starting point for the regulation of AI. We already prohibit discrimination in lending based on race. That discrimination is wrong whether it is done by a human or an AI algorithm. Congress already has a natural entry point for promoting the ethical use of AI through its oversight function. Each congressional committee should review the existing regulations in their jurisdiction and include AI policy in their oversight agendas. This resolution is just the first step. Our project with BPC identifies 78 specific actions, such as those cited above, that will guide America towards responsible AI innovation. It's the responsibility of every elected official to recognize that our world and our economy are changing. We want America to be a leader. And, to ensure that we are, we must take AI seriously by legislating to promote the benefits of AI while creating limits where appropriate. We look forward to collaborating with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in making the possibility of American AI leadership a reality.

By Robin Kelly and David Hogg About seven years ago, President Barack Obama issued an urgent plea while speaking with Sandy Hook Elementary School families in Newtown, Connecticut. He said America was failing to protect our nation's most valued treasure--our children. We had thought gun violence was unthinkable in wealthy, suburban communities and that our children would have some moral protection. Sadly, after 26 people, including 20 children between 6 and 7 years old, were killed in Newtown, we've seen tragedy after tragedy in all American communities. It is now clear that no child is safe. This week marks two years since the shooting that took the lives of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The anniversary--along with the tens of thousands of Americans lives lost to gun violence in recent years--has us reflecting on our job, as Americans, to look out for everyone's children, because they are all our children and our future. Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump continue to fail at that basic job. In many places, like Chicago, gun violence remains a daily reality. We have watched our children grow more afraid as their innocence is stolen watching classmates die and with active shooter drills. Our country's gun violence epidemic has left no place safe for children or adults. Our malls, classrooms, nightclubs, parks, concerts and home Super Bowl parties have become places of death and murder, while politicians issue half-hearted thoughts and prayers with pockets full of checks from the National Rifle Association. Two decades since Columbine, seven years since Sandy Hook, two years since Parkland and hours since the most recent gun homicide in Chicago, we are no closer to a solution, and people continue to die every day. In 2017, nearly 40,000 Americans lost their lives to gun violence. In 2018, 39,741 more were killed, according to a just-released report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's another 39,741 people we have failed. How is it that the most advanced nation in the world cannot protect our people? How many times will we have to gather in grief before enough is enough? Whose son or daughter must die before political leaders grow a spine? In 2018, the American people overwhelmingly elected congressional candidates committed to doing something on gun violence. In more than 70 percent of races where gun safety reform advocates and the NRA invested, candidates backed by gun safety reform organizations won. In February 2019, the House, under Democratic control, kept its promise and passed bipartisan universal background check legislation, H.R. 8. More than 330 days later, it's still sitting on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's desk with no hope of seeing the light of day in the Republican-controlled Senate. We also know that gun safety reforms alone will not solve the epidemic of gun violence that plagues our communities. We need to address the root cause of the violence and create hope in our communities, so our young people pick up coding and construction skills instead of guns and bullets. Nothing stops a bullet like an opportunity. Any real solution to gun violence needs to address a host of challenges because gun violence is a systemic problem that results from a variety of barriers. For example, part of the problem in Chicagoland is that more than half of crime guns are trafficked into the state, largely from neighboring Indiana and Wisconsin. Similar issues exist in New York with trafficking from Virginia. In Los Angeles, the guns come from Arizona. So interstate gun trafficking, which is nearly always tied to trafficking of drugs and persons, needs to be addressed. In other communities, particularly rural communities, decades of declining economic opportunity and a historic level of farm bankruptcies are driving a suicide crisis that's quietly claiming the lives of many Americans. We are willing to work with anyone and everyone to find the solutions and enact them because our goal is simple: saving lives. Recently, March For Our Lives presented "Peace Plan for a Safer America," a comprehensive approach to halve the number of gun deaths over the next decade by addressing the root causes and implementing policies like extreme risk protection orders and increasing public awareness through research. All of these policies are hugely popular with American voters and have been advanced with great success by the House of Representatives and many states. Yet these proposals, despite their merits and support, have been shelved by the Republican-dominated Senate. With nearly 40,000 Americans dying each year, something needs to change. It's time for America to declare our independence from the grip of gun violence. It's time for us to stand up and protect our children and our families. The numbers and trend lines are clear. Without federal action, thousands more will die. More mothers will bury their children. Lifesaving action should have come years ago, before thousands more died. The second-best time to act is right now.

By Robin Kelly Illinois and the Midwest have long been the breadbasket of the world. Soybeans, corn, wheat, pork and other products are proudly grown here and feed people all over the world. Likewise, we still make American steel products, cabinets, pharmaceuticals and beverage cans right here in Kankakee. In order for the goods grown and produced in Illinois to reach markets across the globe, trade is essential. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump's policies have had a devastating impact on local farmers and manufacturers. Over the first two days of his trade war, Illinois soybean and pork producers lost $380 million in market value. Local soybean farmers watched their products spoil, while farmers in Russia and Brazil gobbled up their market share in China, the world's largest market for soybeans. To make matters worse, recent extreme weather and flooding delayed planting and destroyed crops. It was a one-two punch that has pushed a historic number of American farms into bankruptcy. In order to preserve our proud family-farming heritage and the economic benefits that it creates, we must do more to provide local farmers with greater market access. That's where the USMCA comes in. The USMCA, or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, is a newly revised trade deal between the U.S. and our neighbors and largest trading partners. This new deal, designed to address the negative impacts of the 25-year old NAFTA, will expand market access, protect workers and our environment and work to rein in the outrageous costs of some prescription drugs. While I, like many others, had serious concerns about the first draft of the agreement, I worked with other House Democrats to address these concerns so we could get to yes. It was a long and difficult process, but the results were worth it. In today's global economy, trade is vital to the growth of every community in every country. High-quality trade deals, like the newly revised USMCA, will pay dividends for Illinois farmers, workers, manufacturers and families. I'm glad that we could come together -- the White House and Congress -- Republicans and Democrats -- to get a deal that works for everyone, most importantly our local farmers, workers and businesses: the engines of our economy and future. Congresswoman Robin Kelly has represented Kankakee County in Congress since 2013.