Behind closed doors today, the US Senate will grill nearly two dozen tech executives including Tesla CEO and longtime AI critic Elon Musk, ChatGPT-maker and staunch AI defender Sam Altman and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, on how best to regulate AI.
Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who spearheaded the effort for today’s Senate ‘AI Insight Forum,’ described the all-day debate on the implications of artificial intelligence as an ‘all-hands-on-deck moment for Congress.’
‘For Congress to legislate on artificial intelligence,’ Senator Schumer said Tuesday, ‘is for us to engage in one of the most complex and important subjects Congress has ever faced.’
Senator Schumer is set to moderate the forum on how Congress should set artificial intelligence safeguards, which runs from 10AM to 5PM, for its first half.
Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota will help moderate the forum.
Early news reports have mentioned only one major executive who will be present to represent the human laborers whose livelihoods are likely to be put at risk by the rising use to AI: Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO federation of unions.
Behind closed doors today, the US Senate will grill nearly two dozen tech executives including Tesla CEO and longtime AI critic Elon Musk (above), ChatGPT-maker and staunch AI defender Sam Altman and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, on how best to regulate AI.
Last May, over 350 tech experts signed a letter to Congress saying AI regulation ‘should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.’ The letter was signed by ChatGPT creator Sam Altman (above), who will speak to the Senate today
Microsoft President Brad Smith told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday that Congress should ‘require safety brakes for AI that controls or manages critical infrastructure.’ Above Microsoft founder Bill Gates arrives for today’s private AI forum
Schumer, who discussed AI issues with Musk this past April, wants forum attendees to speak on ‘why Congress must act, what questions to ask, and how to build a consensus for safe innovation.’
Other expected attendees include feature Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, and the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Sundar Pichai.
Microsoft President Brad Smith told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday that Congress should ‘require safety brakes for AI that controls or manages critical infrastructure.’
Smith compared AI safeguards to requiring circuit breakers in buildings, school buses having emergency brakes and airplanes having collision avoidance systems.
Some of the firms whose executives will take part in the meeting have already followed the White House advice on making voluntary commitments to help curb AI’s potential to influence politics with easily made and spread disinformation.
Adobe, IBM, Nvidia and five other companies said Tuesday that they have signed President Joe Biden’s voluntary AI commitments, which require steps such as watermarking AI-generated content.
The commitments announced in July were aimed at ensuring AI’s power was not used for destructive purposes. Google, OpenAI and Microsoft signed on in July.
The White House, reportedly, has also been working on an executive order covering AI technology.
