The House of Representatives’ Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to release its report with AI policy recommendations by the end of the year, and Task Force Chair Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., previewed on Tuesday that the report will feature “some of the most comprehensive policy work that’s been done on AI by the legislative branch so far.”
The House launched its task force in February, with the goal of 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.
“We’re going to be having our 16th hearing this week on Friday, and we are well along on our charted task, which is to, by the end of the year, develop a report detailing a proposed Federal regulatory framework for AI,” Rep. Obernolte said on Tuesday during POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit.
“We’d like to do it sooner than the end of the year, but it’s very important to me and to [Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif.,] who is my Democratic co-chair, that this report be unanimous, that it be broadly bipartisan, and that it gets sign-off from not only the speaker and the minority leader but also every single member of the task force,” Rep. Obernolte said. “So, we want to make sure we give ourselves some runway to be able to get those things done.”
The congressman explained that the report will be much more policy-focused than the report that came out in May from the Senate’s AI working group – led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. – which he said focused more on the use of AI within government and the national security implications of AI.
“We will be recommending some legislation, but I want to set everyone’s expectations,” Rep. Obernolte said. “This is not going to be one, 3,000-page AI bill like the European Union passed last year, and then we’re done. Problem solved. We don’t have to worry about this again. I think that AI is a complicated enough topic and a topic that is changing quickly enough that it merits an approach of incrementalism.”
Instead, Rep. Obernolte said that it will take a few bills over the next 10 years to tackle the job of regulating AI. Some near-term threats will need “to be dealt with now,” but he said that for others “we have a little bit more legislative runway” to get it right.
“As part of the report, you will see us recommending some legislation. In fact, at our task force meeting a few days ago, we discussed 13 different AI bills that the task force is considering getting behind,” the congressman said. “And these are all things that we think it’s possible to get passed out of both chambers and signed into law this year.”
At the top of the list, he said, is the Creating Resources for Every American To Experiment with AI Act (CREATE AI Act).
This bill would make permanent the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, which the agency officially launched on Jan. 24. The NAIRR serves as a shared national infrastructure to support the AI research community and power responsible AI use.
Rep. Obernolte said that another priority of the report is setting the stage for the United States to “provide leadership in the setting of international standards on AI.”
Finally, he said the report will look to fund the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “and its work to create testing and evaluation standards that can achieve broad industry consensus,” as well as “making sure that the Federal government has the resources that it needs to continue its sectoral regulation of AI.”
