September 14, 2023: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer held a meeting on Capitol Hill on September 13, 2023, to talk about the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Tech moguls like Elon Musk, CEO of X, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates were there.
The closed-door session had around two dozen people, including tech advocates and civil rights groups.
Chuck Schumer has been planning to pass bipartisan AI legislation. He wants to speed up AI growth while keeping an eye on the risks. This meeting was to get advice from tech experts.
However, the meeting’s ideas might not all be used. Schumer said before the meeting that he hoped the talks would lead to some general agreement.
In the meeting, each person got three minutes to discuss what they think is important for AI. Elon Musk and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked about the big risks AI could pose. Mark Zuckerberg talked about whether AI should be “open source” or closed.
IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, was not in favor of the licensing model that other companies like. Most people agree that there should be some kind of test to check if AI systems are okay to use.
Some senators did not like that the meeting was private. Senator Josh Hawley said he would not go because he felt the meeting was just to help big tech companies. He has a law proposal to make tech companies get licenses for risky AI.
The U.S. government has not been very good at making rules for tech before. Many laws about social media have not been passed. Schumer said that making rules for AI would be very hard because it is complicated and keeps changing.
Senator Mike Rounds said we must ensure AI is used for good. He talked about how AI can help in medicine, which is very important to him because his wife died of cancer.
Some people worry that if there are no rules for AI, bad things could happen. There are already some law proposals. For example, one law would make election ads say if they are made by AI.
Big tech companies want some rules but don’t agree on what they should be. Some lawmakers think we need strict rules, while others worry about too many rules. There is no clear agreement yet.
Europe has made the world’s first AI rules. Some European companies say these rules are too hard and make it difficult to compete with other countries.
The meeting also talked about the need for the government to play a role in making AI safe. Adobe’s chief trust officer, Dana Rao, said they have talked to Europe about this for years.
