Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Been talking for several months On accomplishing a potentially impossible task: Passing bipartisan legislation next year to encourage rapid development AI and mitigate its greatest risks.
On Wednesday, he convened a meeting of some of the nation’s most prominent technology executives, among others, and asked them what Congress should do.
The closed-door forum on Capitol Hill included nearly two dozen tech executives, technology advocates, civil rights groups and labor leaders. The guest list includes some of the biggest names in the industry: mark Zuckerberg X and Tesla’s Elon Musk and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. All 100 senators are invited; the public is not.
“Today, we begin a difficult, complex and critical task: laying the foundation for a bipartisan artificial intelligence policy that Congress can pass,” Schumer said at the opening of the session, delivering his introductory remarks from his office.
Schumer, who moderates the forum with Sen. Mike Rounds, will not necessarily take the advice of tech executives as he works with colleagues to ensure some oversight of the nascent industry. But he hopes they can provide senators with some realistic guidance on how to meaningfully regulate the tech industry.
“It’s going to be a fascinating group because they have different perspectives,” Schumer told The Associated Press in an interview before the event. “Hopefully we can build this into some broad consensus.”
Technology leaders outlined their perspectives and each participant had three minutes to speak on a topic of their choice.
According to an industry source, Musk and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt raised the existential risks posed by artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg raised the issue of closed versus “open source” artificial intelligence models, and IBM Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna has expressed opposition to the licensing approach favored by other companies. Attend.
There appears to be broad support for some kind of independent assessment of artificial intelligence systems, this person said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity due to closed forum rules.
Some senators were critical of the private meeting, saying tech executives should testify publicly.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he would not attend what he called a “big cocktail party for big tech companies.” Hawley, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has introduced legislation that would require tech companies to seek licenses for high-risk artificial intelligence systems.
“I don’t know why we would invite all the biggest monopolies in the world to come in, give Congress advice on how to help them make more money, and then close it to the public,” Hawley said.
Congress has a lackluster record on regulating technology, and the industry has grown mostly without government restraint over the past few decades.
Many lawmakers pointed to the failure to pass any legislation regarding social media. For example, bills aimed at better protecting children, regulating electioneering and enforcing stricter privacy standards have stalled in the House and Senate.
“We don’t want to do what we did with social media and leave it to the technologists to figure it out and then we’ll figure it out,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said of the AI push . .
Schumer said regulation of artificial intelligence will be “one of the most difficult issues we can grapple with,” citing reasons: It’s technologically complex, it’s constantly changing, and it’s “generating so much around the world.” impact,” he said.
but his bipartisan working group — Rounds and Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) — Hope rapid advances in artificial intelligence will bring more urgency.
Rounds said ahead of the forum that Congress needs to stay ahead of the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence and ensure it continues to “grow aggressively” while addressing potential issues with data transparency and privacy.
“AI is not going away, it can do some really good things and it can also be a real challenge,” Lowndes said.
The release of ChatGPT less than a year ago sparked calls from businesses across many industries for new generative AI tools that can write human-like passages of text, program computer code, and create novel images, audio, and Video. Hype over such tools has fueled concerns about their potential social harm and prompted calls for greater transparency into how the data behind new products is collected and used.
“Guardrails must be built with government involvement,” Schumer said. “Without guardrails, who knows what would have happened.”
Several specific proposals have been introduced, including legislation from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., that would require disclaimers on election ads generated by artificial intelligence with deceptive images and sounds. Hawley and Blumenthal’s broader approach would create a government oversight agency with the power to review the harms of certain AI systems before granting licenses.
In the United States, major tech companies have expressed support for AI regulations, although they don’t necessarily agree on what it means. Microsoft, for example, has endorsed a licensing approach, while IBM prefers rules governing the deployment of specific risky uses of AI rather than the technology itself.
Likewise, many members of Congress agree that legislation is needed, but there is little consensus. There are also divisions, with some members of Congress more worried about overregulation and others more worried about potential risks. These divisions tend to be divided along party lines.
“My involvement in this process is in large part to make sure that we take action, but that we don’t take action that is bolder or too broad than the circumstances call for,” Young said. “We should be skeptical of government, which is why I think it’s important to bring Republicans to the table.”
Some of Schumer’s most influential guests, including Musk and Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, have expressed more dire concerns, prompting popular science fiction , that is, without appropriate safeguards, humans may lose control of advanced artificial intelligence systems.
But for many lawmakers and the people they represent, the impact of AI on jobs and dealing with the deluge of misinformation generated by AI are more immediate concerns.
Lowndes said he wants to see new medical technology save lives and give medical professionals access to more data. The topic is “very personal to me,” Lowndes said after his wife died of cancer two years ago.
Some Republicans have been wary of following the EU’s path. Signed in June The world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules. The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Bill will govern any product or service that uses artificial intelligence systems and classify them according to four levels of risk, from minimal to unacceptable.
european conglomerate Called EU leaders have reconsidered the rules, arguing they could make it harder for companies in the 27-nation country to compete with overseas rivals in the use of generative artificial intelligence.
“We have always said that we believe artificial intelligence should be regulated,” said Dana Rao, general counsel and chief fiduciary officer of software company Adobe. “We have been discussing this with Europe for the past four years, helping them think through their upcoming AI bill. There are high-risk use cases for AI and we think governments have a role to play to ensure they are safe for the public and consumers of.”
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O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.
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