Kyrsten Sinema Went on CNN to Talk About AI

CNN’s Jake Tapper invited former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on his show last week to, as he put it, “discuss how she’s working with the Trump administration to advance some particular causes about which she is passionate.” 

Put another way, CNN had on Sinema to talk about issues of relevance to her lobbying firm’s clients and her other business endeavors, as she races toward making “well over a million dollars this year,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

The network did not disclose her work in Washington’s influence-peddling industry, even as she was asked to talk about artificial intelligence and its potential role in health care. It was a puzzling decision, given that when Sinema joined the lobbying firm Hogan Lovells, she said in a video that she was “excited to start working with companies that I’ve long known in the areas of AI.” The firm, in announcing her hiring, touted Sinema’s “extensive experience in AI.” 

It’s fairly standard for former lawmakers to take a trip through Washington’s proverbial “revolving door” once they’re done with their time in office and enter the influence industry — especially former lawmakers with Sinema’s profile. Corporate America tends to reward conservative and moderate Democrats who undermine efforts by their party’s president to enact progressive policies, as Sinema did. (Sinema joined Congress as a Democrat before leaving the party to become an independent, but continued to caucus with Senate Democrats.)

These former lawmakers appear with some frequency on TV and in newspapers, and cable news networks rarely, if ever, note what those lawmakers are now doing with their time for compensation. Sinema’s CNN appearance was unusual, though, in that the cable network gave Sinema a relatively blank slate in primetime to discuss issues she is actively working on now as a consultant. 

The American public has no way of knowing who exactly Sinema’s clients are. The former one-term senator, who decided last year to retire from Congress rather than lose her race to a Democrat, is not technically a lobbyist, yet; under federal ethics rules, she is barred from registering to lobby Congress for two years. As such, her clients have not been disclosed.   

Tapper did note that Sinema is “invested in” the topic of artificial intelligence and had “launched the Spark Center with Arizona State University.” 

That’s probably a story worth a bit more exploration: Shortly after she left office, Sinema donated $3 million from her federal campaign account to the Arizona State University Foundation to launch the Spark Center for Innovation in Learning. Sinema told Tapper she’s partnering on this work with OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT. 

“We’re partnering with OpenAI, and we’re going to do a competition, and then financially and with mentorship help these companies actually get to the market,” Sinema said, adding: “Maybe there’ll be an app that helps dyslexic students take in information differently than in a traditional classroom.”

At one point, Tapper asked Sinema: “What do you make of President Trump’s posture on AI and what are you guys doing over there?”

She replied, “You know, there are folks who have lots of various opinions about the Trump administration. But I got to say, on AI, they are knocking it out of the park. David Sacks, who was appointed as the AI and crypto czar, knows the stuff inside and out.” (Sinema has said she’s working with clients in the cryptocurrency industry, too.) 

Sinema went on to praise the Trump administration’s “AI Action Plan.”

“It is well-reasoned. It is well-thought. It is ambitious,” she said. “I mean, it really strikes a path for us to win the AI race against China, which I think is of national security importance, but also kind of an existential threat that we face as a country.”

Noting that he “was talking to a doctor just earlier today,” Tapper asked Sinema about “the ability to use AI to come up with medicines.”

Sinema, whose firm represents a group called the AI Healthcare Coalition, said, “Yes, that’s actually already happening. I’m actually working with a company that uses AI to identify gaps in the pharmaceutical industry and look for orphan drugs that have been left behind, or diseases where we could use existing drugs to apply to other diseases. I mean, the potential of AI to transform all of our lives is incredible.”

It certainly seems like AI is transforming our lives: Lots of corporate executives seem convinced that they can use the developing technology to lay off their workers.

More importantly, it sounds like the AI business is going to help Kyrsten Sinema make money. It’s not clear why CNN needed to help with this, but that happened.