Intuit AI chief says Constitution offers lessons for AI governance
Ashok N. Srivastava argued that AI governance should borrow from the Constitution’s balance of durability, distributed power and adaptation.
By Sofia Marchetti · World Affairs Correspondent
3 min read
Intuit’s chief AI officer Ashok N. Srivastava said in a Fortune commentary that the U.S. Constitution offers a model for AI governance built on shared power, trust and adaptability. His argument puts the debate over artificial intelligence in institutional terms, saying governments, companies, researchers and educators face choices about who controls the technology and who benefits from it.
Fortune identified Srivastava as senior vice president and chief AI officer at Intuit. In the July 3 commentary, he framed the Constitution, drafted 250 years ago, as an unusually durable governance system that survived technological and social changes its authors could not have predicted.
Constitution as a model for AI rules
Srivastava wrote that the framers did not have answers for the AI era, but he said their design offers a useful approach. He pointed to the Constitution’s distribution of authority across institutions, contrasting it with the British system of concentrated power in Parliament and the Crown.
That structure, in Srivastava’s view, helped the United States build a system strong enough to last while still leaving room for change. He cited Article V, which created a process for amending the Constitution, as an example of how a durable framework can adapt without being discarded.
Srivastava said similar questions now face leaders working with AI: how to divide power, how to preserve trust and how to spread the gains from innovation beyond a narrow group. He argued that AI governance should protect individuals while also allowing broad innovation.
Call for collaboration beyond companies
Srivastava also linked constitutional adaptability to corporate behavior. He said long-lasting American companies have treated their basic operating principles as documents that can evolve, giving teams close to customers room to challenge old methods.
He cited Intuit as an example, saying the company has changed across several technology periods over more than 40 years, from DOS disks to the web, mobile, cloud computing and AI. He argued, however, that company-level flexibility is not enough for AI because the technology’s scale requires cooperation across sectors.
To describe that approach, Srivastava used the example of rural barn raising, where neighbors helped build a structure for a family because they saw community benefit in the work. He said AI development should use a similar collaborative model involving business, universities, government and the public.
Srivastava called for AI safety standards, public-private partnerships to expand AI education, and attention to whether training data, evaluation systems and deployment practices reflect the people affected by the technology. He said those steps are needed to make AI safer, more ethical and more inclusive.
The commentary closed with an analogy to Benjamin Franklin’s reported observation about the carved sun on George Washington’s chair at the signing of the Constitution. Srivastava used the anecdote to argue that institutions built today for AI should be designed to support broad prosperity over many generations.
Fortune noted that the piece represented Srivastava’s views and did not necessarily reflect the views of the publication.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.