Ahead of the U.S. Senate’s seventh special forum on artificial intelligence on Nov. 29, AI Caucus Co-Chair Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., said today he has been encouraged by the amount of bipartisan effort shown by his colleagues at the first six AI forums.
The nine-part series involves closed-door meetings that feature input from AI industry experts, with the aim of educating senators on the emerging technology and the course of any action the government may take that would impact AI.
“I have been encouraged, frankly a little surprised, as we go into these AI insight forums,” Sen. Young said during Axios’ AI+DC Summit today.
“I expected more disagreement when it came to the role that government should play, the extent to which we should protect workers in various ways from the technology. There haven’t been very significant disagreements,” he said.
The senator explained that the bipartisan effort to push comprehensive AI regulation across the finish line may begin to crack once lawmakers “begin to work through the committees and go through regular order and the television cameras are turned on.”
“The issue of labor could be one where we see some disagreements. There may be some other areas, but I have frankly, I’ve not seen those fault lines yet,” Sen. Young said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced the AI insight forums earlier this summer, noting that he will begin inviting “the best of the best” to convene in one room to do “years of work in just months.”
The first bipartisan AI forum was held on Sept. 13 – co-led by Sens. Schumer and Young, as well as Sens. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. and Mike Rounds, R-S.D. – and hosted a gaggle of big tech CEOs, including X’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
The five AI forums that followed on Capitol Hill involved conversations with experts around topics including innovation, workforce, high-impact AI, elections, and privacy.
Sen. Young confirmed that the seventh AI insight forum to be held on Wednesday will tackle transparency, intellectual property, and copyright. The forum will include experts from the entertainment industry, including music and film gurus.
“We’re crosscutting this topic so that we’re informed of the opportunities but also of the risks in these different areas,” Sen. Young said of tomorrow’s AI insight forum discussion focus. “There aren’t many of the so-called doomsday scenarios, but they’re enough to focus the mind. And there are some ways we’re finding that we can mitigate – I don’t think you can ever eliminate the risks, but you can mitigate – the risks as we did with nuclear technology, for example, in a previous generation.”
“So, this is our generation’s opportunity to try and deal with what some have characterized as existential, but also at the same time to harness the amazing upside opportunity which we can’t lose sight of,” the senator said.
When it comes the time to draft comprehensive AI regulations, the AI Caucus lead said that the real challenge will be to adapt existing laws – like those around privacy and civil rights – to be relevant in an AI world.
“Much of this is already covered by existing law,” Sen. Young said during the Axios event today. “The challenge as most of us see it, is to adapt our existing values – which are already embodied in our laws – to an AI enabled world.”
“That means drafting new regulations, sometimes it will mean Congress acting to adjust our existing statutes, and then ensuring – and this is a key point – ensuring the government has enough expertise within individual agencies on an ongoing basis to seize new opportunities, to identify them, to draft new regulations where required, and to interact with experts in the commercial realm about AI.”
