Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was set to convene a closed-door meeting Wednesday with tech execs about mitigating the biggest risks from emerging artificial intelligence.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) planned to join Schumer in leading the bipartisan forum to which all 100 Senators were invited, along with nearly two dozen tech leaders and advocates.
The meeting comes ahead of legislation Congress hopes to pass within the next year. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk were expected to be among the tech execs attending the forum.
The Senators are not obliged to take the execs’ advice, but Schumer is hoping they’ll give the lawmakers some realistic direction as they attempt to pass meaningful regulation of the tech industry.
“It’s going to be a fascinating group because they have different points of view,” Schumer said ahead of the forum. “Hopefully we can weave it into a little bit of some broad consensus.” He further noted that passing AI regulation will be “one of the most difficult issues we can ever take on” due to its technical complexities and ongoing evolution.
Rounds, meanwhile, noted that “AI is not going away, and it can do some really good things or it can be a real challenge.”
In July, several big tech firms leading AI’s development, including Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft as well as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and startups Anthropic and Inflection, struck an agreement to meet a set of safeguards brokered by the Biden Administration.
Those “voluntary commitments” came as the White House has promised “protect Americans’ rights and safety” amid the emerging technology.
The U.S. is among a number of countries that have already been looking at ways to regulate AI, including European Union lawmakers who have been negotiating sweeping Artificial Intelligence rules for the 27-nation organization.
