On February 22, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Jonathan Mayer as the Justice Department’s inaugural Chief Science and Technology Advisor and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer. Mayer will sit in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and lead the Department’s newly established Emerging Technologies Board which coordinates and governs AI and other emerging technologies across the Department. Mayer will also build a team of technical and policy experts in cybersecurity and AI. The Chief AI Officer position is a role required by President Biden’s Executive Order on AI. Mayer is an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University and served as the technology law and policy advisor to then-Senator Kamala Harris as well as the chief technologist to the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau.
Putting It Into Practice: This appointment, alongside Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco’s recent remarks on AI, signals the Department’s determination to keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments that come with generative AI.