Washington
CNN
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The U.S. Senate is inching forward with plans to regulate artificial intelligence after months of watching how ChatGPT and similar tools impact or disrupt broad areas of society. .
But even though senators have laid out the outline of their plan, it will still be several months before the bill is passed, signed into law, or even comprehensive legislation that would put guardrails in place for the industry. The pace of planned progress stands in contrast to the rapid adoption of generative AI by businesses and organizations, which has flooded the industry with investment.
The Senate's plan is to brief lawmakers on the basic facts of artificial intelligence over the summer before beginning consideration of the bill in the coming months, even though some senators have begun proposing it. I'm looking for something.
The initiative reflects the failure of many lawmakers to act despite urgent calls from civil society groups and industry for guardrails for the technology.
To help educate members, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Tuesday that he will hold three senator-only briefings in the coming weeks.
The closed-door briefing will cover a wide range of topics, from current capabilities in AI and competition in AI development to how the U.S. national security and defense agencies are already leveraging the technology. The latter session will be the first-ever classified Senate briefing on AI, Schumer said.
“The Senate must deepen its expertise on this pressing topic,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues announcing the briefing. “AI is already changing our world, and experts have repeatedly said it will have a profound impact on everything from national security to the classroom to the workforce. This includes the possibility of leaving the job.
Schumer began high-level advocacy for the AI bill in April, proposing that the final bill be shaped by four principles that promote transparency and democratic values. .
South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, one of three other senators named by Schumer to lead a comprehensive AI bill, said the briefing will be held before Congress goes into recess in August. It is scheduled to be completed by.
Rounds told reporters Wednesday on the sidelines of the AWS Summit in Washington that there may be “different ideas floating around,” but it's not necessarily a bill that should be mentioned.
How Schumer, Rounds and the other leading members of the AI task force, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich and Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young, will coordinate their various legislative proposals. The case has not yet been decided.
Options include forming a select committee to write a comprehensive AI bill or “splitting it up and having a number of different committees submit different bills,” Lowndes said. said.
The AI hype has generated high-profile hearings and sporadic policy proposals. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, calling for regulation, and the night before he surprised eager House members with a technical demonstration.
For example, Sen. Michael Bennet has introduced a bill that would create a new federal agency with the power to regulate things like AI. And on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley announced his own framework for an AI bill that calls for allowing Americans to sue companies for harm caused by AI models.
Rounds told reporters that Schumer has not set a deadline for AI legislation, adding that the goal now is to let the idea “melt out for a while.”
But he believes that given the expected impact of AI on many government agencies and industries, he believes that, similar to how the Senate crafts the annual spending package known as the National Defense, a broad and He predicted that it would be impossible not to foresee an open legislative process. Authorization law.
“We bring all these ideas to the table and start putting this bill together in a way very quietly behind the scenes,” he said. “We put a bill through the committee process that says this has a chance of passing, and then we allow other members to come in and submit amendments. It's working well.”
