Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., led a bipartisan group of lawmakers today in unveiling a long-awaited roadmap for AI policy in the Senate.
The 31-page document highlights eight AI policy priorities for Senate committees to consider in the 118th Congress “and beyond,” including boosting Federal funding for AI – to the tune of $32 billion per year – and passing a comprehensive Federal data privacy law.
Today’s roadmap is the product of four months of bipartisan meetings with industry and academia leaders in the emerging technology field – co-led by Sens. Schumer, Mike Rounds, R-S.D., Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Todd Young, R-Ind.
Senate Majority Leader Schumer began holding AI insight forums in the summer of 2023, inviting “the best of the best” to convene in one room to do “years of work in just months.”
The meetings happened throughout the fall behind closed doors and were not like traditional committee hearings. Senators and their staff were encouraged to attend but only the four lawmakers leading the forums were allowed to ask questions.
The first bipartisan AI forum was held on Sept. 13 and hosted a gaggle of big tech CEOs, including X’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. The eight AI forums that followed on Capitol Hill involved conversations with experts around topics including innovation, workforce, high-impact AI, elections, privacy, copyright and intellectual property, AI risks, and national security.
“The AI Insight Forums propelled the AI Working Group to better understand the policy landscape of AI and helped inform a policy roadmap – pinpointing emerging areas of consensus within respective policy domains, as well as areas of disagreement, while also revealing where further work and research is needed,” the roadmap released by the four senators today says.
The first policy priority calls for increased funding for AI innovation “with the goal of reaching as soon as possible … at least $32 billion per year for (non-defense) AI innovation.”
This section of the roadmap includes nearly three dozen priority recommendations for the Senate – ranging from codifying the National AI Research Resource by passing the bicameral CREATE AI Act to founding a series of “AI Grand Challenge” programs, drawing inspiration from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s similar tech challenges.
The roadmap’s second policy priority keys on AI and the workforce, calling on lawmakers to uphold a “conscientious consideration” of the impact AI will have on the workforce, including the potential for job displacement and the need to upskill and retrain workers.
The working group endorsed the Workforce DATA Act, which would authorize the Bureau of Labor Statistics to record the effect of AI on the workforce and measure those trends over time – including job displacement, the number of new jobs created, and the shifting in-demand skills.
The third priority area – “high impact uses of AI” – encourages lawmakers to ensure enforcement of existing laws for AI, including ways to address any gaps or unintended harmful bias.
With 18 recommendations to Senate committees, this section of the roadmap calls for lawmakers to consider the use of AI in critical infrastructure sectors like healthcare, energy, and transportation.
The “elections and democracy” priority area encourages effective watermarking as it relates to AI-generated election content. “The AI Working Group encourages AI deployers and content providers to implement robust protections in advance of the upcoming election to mitigate AI-generated content that is objectively false, while still protecting First Amendment rights,” the roadmap says.
Despite there being several existing bills that aim to mitigate the risk of AI in the upcoming elections, the roadmap fails to endorse any one in particular.
The “privacy and liability” priority area calls for a strong comprehensive Federal data privacy law to protect personal information. “The legislation should address issues related to data minimization, data security, consumer data rights, consent and disclosure, and data brokers,” the roadmap says.
The Senate and House recently unveiled a discussion draft of the American Privacy Rights Act – a law that failed in the last Congress to put in place a national data privacy standard – but the AI policy roadmap does not mention it specifically.
The roadmap’s sixth section calls for the development of use case-specific requirements for AI transparency and explainability, which ranges from legislation that protects against the unauthorized use of one’s name, image, likeness, and voice as it relates to AI and legislation aimed at establishing a public awareness and education campaign for AI – similar to that of digital literacy.
The new roadmap for future AI policy also focuses on mitigating the threat of potential long-term risk scenarios from AI and prioritizing the development of standards for testing to understand potential AI harms.
Finally, the roadmap offers 13 recommendations for bolstering national security by leading globally in the adoption of emerging technologies and addressing national security threats, risks, and opportunities for AI.
Specifically, it calls for legislation to improve and expand the AI talent pathway into the military and partnering with NASA to leverage advanced AI models to improve the management of space debris, among others.
AI Roadmap Policies Not ‘Exhaustive,’ Senators Say
The eight areas of AI legislative priorities highlighted in the roadmap released today are not an “exhaustive menu of policy proposals,” the leaders of the Senate AI Working Group recognized.
“We hope this roadmap will stimulate momentum for new and ongoing consideration of bipartisan AI legislation, ensure the United States remains at the forefront of innovation in this technology, and help all Americans benefit from the many opportunities created by AI,” the document says.
The four members of the Senate AI Working Group offered a few “final overarching thoughts”:
- Given the cross-jurisdictional nature of AI policy issues, committees should continue to collaborate closely and frequently on AI legislation as well as agree on shared clear definitions for all key terms;
- Committees should reflect on the synergies between AI and other emerging technologies to avoid creating tech silos where the impact of legislation and funding could otherwise be collectively amplified;
- Committees should continue to seek outside input from a variety of stakeholders and experts to inform the best path forward for AI; and
- The executive branch should share with Congress, in a timely fashion and on an ongoing basis, updates on administration activities related to AI to better inform the legislative process.
“The Senate AI Working Group’s report provides a practical roadmap for AI – a strategic vision for the future of AI, emphasizing sustained federal investment, workforce readiness, and ethical deployment,” said Dave Vennergrund, GDIT’s vice president of AI and data insights. “By investing in AI and ensuring our workforce is trained and reskilled to effectively leverage it, we can enhance operational capabilities that are vital for national security, healthcare, and other mission critical operations. As agencies continue to apply AI, the balance between innovation, governance, and risk management has never been more important.”
Vennergrund added, “We think the report gets it right – and GDIT is actively partnering with agencies to deliver safe, secure and responsible AI solutions that align with these strategic goals.”
