Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI.gov

ai.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 266 posts

Re: AI.gov

#91

Post by seattle_spring »

jmac01 wrote: post #28
aduffy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recoding America[1] is an excellent book about this problem, but it extends a lot further than just contractors charging inflated rates. The government itself has a culture that is so averse to trying new things and compliance with existing policy that it's actually dangerous to the careers of civil servants to do anything innovative, because that is one of the only things they can actually be fired for. The solution…

So what you're saying is, government is too..... Conservative? :p Maybe we are just feeling the effects that the modern American "left" is basically just the American right of the 60s lol We need some actual liberals who aren't just socially liberal but also willing to spend money on new ideas.

[flagged]

Re: AI.gov

#93

Post by nerdponx »

exabrial wrote: post #88

How do I not pay for this with my tax dollars?

If you disagree with something the President or one of his subordinate agencies does, write your representatives in Congress and ask them to pass legislation. The President can't do anything that Congress tells him not to do.

Re: AI.gov

#94

Post by jjcm »

The Presidential Innovation Fellow is the highest level role they're offering as part of this. For this, the requirements are "mid-senior/executive career professional experience in a subject matter expertise" with "experience collaborating with and leading cross-functional teams".

The requirements feel analogous to a staff/principal level role in the software industry, so just for comparison here's the compensation for these roles across the giants:

Microsoft (level 66): $390,707

Amazon (L7): $547,490

Facebook (E6): $610,713

Apple (ICT5): $497,780

Google (L6): $506,141

US Gov: $155,700 to start, with a max of $183,500 after 18 years (step increases are limited on a time basis)

The US government is trying to leverage AI by paying 30.4% the wage of the leaders in private industry. I just don't see how they're going to be effective in doing this.

Re: AI.gov

#95

Post by nerdponx »

Racing0461 wrote: post #82
RIMR wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know everyone has already figured out what you're trying to say, but for clarity, do you mind elaborating on what you meant here?

Why add a section on immigration? The stuff on the page is already known. They just add it to cross off a checkbox of what they wanted to signal. And its just a generic description of the visas and nothing localized to th visa type and ai. And for the other commenters calling me "right wing', my views are pretty much '04 Obama. It's just telling how far off the rails we have gone.

Obama wasn't exactly known for his progressive immigration policy.

Re: AI.gov

#96

Post by rob »

BD103 wrote: post #90

Occasionally I enjoy viewing the HTML of websites to try to deduce what web framework they are using. I couldn't figure it out for this one, but here are some things that I find interesting: - On line 90 of the homepage, there is a single script called `document.createElement('main');` - The website uses the ` ` tag to support multiple sources for images - script.js on the website has ANSI art of the US flag ( https:…

You answered your question with your third point's URL ('/wp-content/themes/[...]') - they're using WordPress. :)

Re: AI.gov

#97

Post by sgjohnson »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #37

On their "immigrate" page ( https://ai.gov/immigrate/ ) , they say "We must attract, train, and retain the most talented workforce in the world," and mention H-1Bs as a part of that solution. But federal law caps H-1Bs at 60,000 a year, of which over a quarter goes right to Amazon and AWS (EDIT: Turns out I'm wrong about this!). Does the government as an employer get to circumvent the cap? Or are they suggesting that…

> Or is it just a meaningless website?

It is a meaningless website. Everybody and their dog knows that in the present political climate it’s practically impossible to change the immigration law. It’s only a remote theoretical possibility that the US could fix their immigration system.

Re: AI.gov

#98

Post by UncleOxidant »

godelski wrote: post #24
empath-nirvana wrote: post #9

The US government can't legally pay the salaries required to find AI experts right now (just look at the salaries on the open positions). So all this work will end up being done by contractors who _can_ pay those salaries while the contractors skim off the top. The US really needs a special schedule for software developers if they want technical expertise in house (and they really should have technical expertise in h…

Some of the jobs go up to $180k/yr. That's not too bad considering it doesn't look like it requires DC location. But others like the grad assistant for $22/hr is laughable. Still, I agree there's a problem with salaries not being competitive. I've interned at DOE labs before and lots of people don't stay for long.

Where exactly are you seeing that $180K remote job? When I specify 'remote' on that site only 4 jobs come up. One of them is data scientist, another is IT Specialist and the other two seem administrative. The IT Specialist job is listed at $99K while the other three are around $70K/year.

Re: AI.gov

#99

Post by aaviator42 »

BD103 wrote: post #90

Occasionally I enjoy viewing the HTML of websites to try to deduce what web framework they are using. I couldn't figure it out for this one, but here are some things that I find interesting: - On line 90 of the homepage, there is a single script called `document.createElement('main');` - The website uses the ` ` tag to support multiple sources for images - script.js on the website has ANSI art of the US flag ( https:…

CMS: WordPress

UI: USWDS: https://designsystem.digital.gov/

Source: Wappalyzer

Re: AI.gov

#100

Post by acdha »

mattnewton wrote: post #11
empath-nirvana wrote: post #9

The US government can't legally pay the salaries required to find AI experts right now (just look at the salaries on the open positions). So all this work will end up being done by contractors who _can_ pay those salaries while the contractors skim off the top. The US really needs a special schedule for software developers if they want technical expertise in house (and they really should have technical expertise in h…

Can’t they just use the contractor loophole?

They can but that has several widespread problems: the biggest is that you need skilled people in the government who can review bids and oversee work – otherwise you get a $10M contact form because someone at BigCo1 wanted to play buzzword bingo and keep their buddies employed, and the “overseer” from BigCo2 wasn’t going to saying the team, often former coworkers, wasn’t performing well because that’d invite honest grading on other contracts where the relations are reversed.

Beyond that, you get various efficiency issues: contractor turnover tends to be higher, which is terrible when institutional memory matters or when you’re relying on their best people to keep a larger group productive, and there are often various contractual or policy issues making work less efficient. One challenge is that managing contracts is a lot of work, so there’s a temptation to go with the big companies who offer many services but that often means that they’re only good at one area and you get mediocre results in the other ones which were lumped into the same contract - often banking on the difficulty of taking corrective action meaning that people will accept low performance in non-core areas to avoid jeopardizing a core project by the same company. None of that’s intractable but it adds up and fixing it is hard.

Post reply on HN