Washington state needs a ‘coherent’ story to compete in AI, leaders agree

Washington state may have everything it needs to become a global AI hub. The problem is, it hasn’t figured out how to say so, and its political and tech leaders agree it’s time they got to work on it. 

On Wednesday, the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) convened a roundtable of civic and industry leaders from throughout the Seattle region to ask a pointed question: What will it actually take for Washington state to stop playing catch-up with Silicon Valley and start leading?

At the center of the debate was the nonprofit’s latest white paper, “Seattle’s AI Advantage: The Path to Global Leadership.”

In it, the author and futurist Alex Lightman argues the Emerald City holds six distinct advantages over rival tech hubs: abundance of clean energy, a backyard full of hyperscalers like Microsoft and Amazon, an acceptance of using AI to continuously improve AI and software, access to quantum computing, the ability to run large-scale simulations cheaply, and a growing foothold in space technology.

These assets, he contends, are what position Seattle to become a top-five U.S. city economically, comparable to a G7 economy with a $1 trillion GDP.

Yet while WTIA’s white paper largely shows that the city has incredible potential, the lobbying group emphasizes that it is a roadmap. The real challenge is to figure out what happens next. Once the talking is done, who’s going to organize the effort to transform the state? 

“I think one of the most important things we can do is start telling this story,” said Randa Minkarah, WTIA chief operations executive, referring to Washington’s need to establish itself as a leading, responsible AI and advanced technology region. “How do we get that out there that changes people’s point of view?”

Once that narrative takes hold, it can create momentum—”a storytelling flywheel” that spreads best practices and lessons across communities and organizations, Minkarah added.

Washington’s struggle to tell a coherent AI story isn’t caused by a single issue, but rather by a host of issues. Rachel Smith, president of the Washington Roundtable, pointed to a three-way misalignment between federal priorities and dollars, state priorities and dollars, and what is actually happening on the ground in communities.

“When those things are all misaligned, it feels like we spend a whole lot of money and we don’t get a whole lot out of it,” she said.

Smith called for a broader strategy focused on economic competitiveness and tax reform. This is a topic of debate after state lawmakers approved a new income tax on high earners this month. One investor in the audience underscored the issue, noting that some of the people writing checks in Washington’s tech ecosystem have moved their residences out of state.

There’s also the failure to make AI’s benefits accessible to everyday Washingtonians, as indigenous communities and local residents feel excluded. And compounding the issue is the lack of strategic alignment, as Washington has pared back its economic development strategy. That’s not what community leaders want—they want Olympia to take the lead. 

“That is a place where the state having a direction on the AI industry, where we want to go, would be super helpful,” Canedo remarked. Beau Perschbacher, Governor Bob Ferguson’s Senior Policy Advisor for Economic Development, didn’t disagree.

So what actually needs to happen? 

Panelists didn’t hold back when asked what Washington’s leaders must do in the next 24 months: Joe Nguyen, a former Washington State senator and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, wants more risk-takers—businesses willing to be first movers in adopting AI within their industries and then evangelize what’s possible.

Jesse Canedo, chief economic development officer for the City of Bellevue, hopes operators can execute on the white paper’s vision. 

“Seattle as a region does a lot of great visioning,” he said. “It needs a lot of operationalizing of the big, bold ideas…Housing, people, and energy are the three big things that we can operationalize very quickly out of this vision.”

Not everyone agreed on the path forward. 

Alvin Graylin, a fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, argued that Washington should position itself as a global hub for open-source AI rather than following Silicon Valley’s closed-model, big-spending approach. 

He pointed to Chinese labs producing near-equivalent models at a fraction of the cost, and said Washington could tap into millions of open-source developers worldwide rather than competing for a few thousand elite researchers at big labs.

Lightman, the white paper’s author, was skeptical. He noted that Microsoft made Netscape’s browser irrelevant by giving its own browser away, then made trillions selling everything around it. Open source has a ceiling, he argued, and it wouldn’t get Seattle to a trillion-dollar economy.

Separately, Perschbacher wants more federal funding to come to the state, and to improve community outreach to bring more people along as partners.

Can these leaders take all of their ideas and turn them into action? At the very least, the WTIA secured two pledges: The Washington Roundtable and the Seattle Metro Chamber both said they would work with the Governor’s office to shape a statewide economic development strategy, and Perschbacher committed to leading a federal funding working group.

Others joining the conversation included Alicia Teel, deputy director of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development. In addition to Minkarah, representing WTIA were Vice President of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Nick Ellingson, Chair of the Advanced Technologies Cluster Arry Yu, and Director of Industry and Community Relations Terrance Stevenson.