Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., chairman of the newly formed House AI Task Force, said Tuesday that his goal is to create a regulatory framework for AI “that then we can hang various pieces of legislation on.”
The House officially launched its bipartisan AI Task Force on AI on Feb. 20 to help move along legislative proposals to regulate the evolving technology.
The task force – which takes after the Senate’s AI working group – is chaired by Rep. Obernolte and co-chaired by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and is made up of 12 Republicans and 12 Democrats.
“It’s important to note that the purpose of the task force is not education,” Rep. Obernolte said during a March 5 National Security Institute event on Capitol Hill. “We have an AI caucus that has a very active and engaged membership. We’ve been working on education for the last year, as the Senate has, and I think both chambers have done a pretty good job of getting their members [knowledgeable] on the issue.”
“The task force, in contrast, is charged with creating a regulatory framework for AI, that then we can hang various pieces of legislation on,” the congressman said.
The group is tasked with developing a comprehensive report on AI to include guiding principles, recommendations, and bipartisan policy proposals to help safeguard the nation against the risks of AI.
“I think it’s very unlikely that you will see something like the EU AI Act here – a 3,000-page bill that does essentially a bunch of regulating at once and then we can pretend, ‘Problem solved, we’re going to move on,’” Rep. Obernolte said. “The next big inflection that comes along with AI is going to cause them to have to go back to the drawing board again.”
“I think a much more fruitful approach is going to be a bunch of bills every year for the next 10 years,” he continued, adding, “And I think that that’s appropriate because you have to have a reason for regulating AI. I think it’s pretty clear that if you approach regulation for the purpose of regulating, then you’ve embarked on a fool’s errand.”
“We have to have a purpose – a guiding North Star guiding your efforts. And I think that, in the case of AI, it’s pretty clear: mitigating societal and consumer harms is that North Star, that’s our purpose,” Rep. Obernolte said.
The chairman explained that he sees the risks of AI and the tasks of regulating them in two different buckets: short-term harms that need to be mitigated, and medium- and long-term harms.
“It’s okay that we take a little bit more time to be a little bit more introspective about that kind of regulation because we have more runway,” Rep. Obernolte said. “I think that the tackling the low hanging fruit first and then on the issues that we don’t really fully understand yet, I think it’s appropriate to take the time that we need to be deliberative and make sure that we get it right.”
An example of regulation that needs more careful thought, Rep. Obernolte said, is a comprehensive Federal digital data privacy standard – legislation the congressman said he has been working on outside of the task force “because it’s an issue that covers a much larger area of the market than just AI.”
The representative said that Congress is currently at a “crossroads” when it comes to regulating AI.
“We’re going to have to decide here very shortly whether or not we follow the lead of entities like the EU, and we say, ‘AI is different. It’s a brand-new thing and we need a brand-new bureaucracy to deal with it. We’re going to preempt the ability to regulate away from all of our sectoral departments like the FDA, because AI is special,’” Rep. Obernolte said.
“Or do we empower our existing sectoral regulators to do what they’re already doing and give them the tools and resources that they need and the evaluation standards and the testing protocols, and the sandboxes – all the things that they’re going to need to do their jobs,” he said. “So, we’re going to have to decide that very soon.”
