On Tuesday, senators will question OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on the “dangers and promises” of artificial intelligence as part of a campaign to better understand this rapidly emerging technology and impose some kind of regime. regulation around it.
Altman will testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, which will mark his first time as a witness in a congressional public hearing. His testimony comes several weeks after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.N.Y., said he was working on draft regulations and several members of the House and Senate spoke about the need for a highway code for AI.
Members of the subcommittee have made it clear over the past week that they want to learn more about AI to ensure it is used in a safe and responsible way. The subcommittee’s lead Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital on Monday that he was concerned about the role AI could play in the next election cycle.
“We need to understand the scope of AI and its importance. I mean, I want to know, are we going to be able to have free, open and fair elections in this country in the future? Or is AI going to control the information we can get as voters so much that basically we’re going to be spoon-fed everything by an algorithm and the people controlling it? Hawley asked.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will appear before a Senate panel on Tuesday.
He said the possibility of economic upheaval and job losses is another issue Congress needs to consider.
“I want to better understand what this means for work,” Hawley said. “I mean, does that mean AI will soon replace workers — especially I’m concerned about blue collar workers — and gobble up jobs that should go to our workers in this country?”
“This idea that we can just trust Big Tech companies to do the right thing is laughable. I mean, we’ve seen that with social media now. “Just trust us,” they have been saying for years as they poison our children with their images, with depictions of suicide, driving them into drug addiction,” Hawley added.
Subcommittee chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said when announcing the event, “Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to meet its immense promise. and its pitfalls”.
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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital that he plans to ask Altman about the potential effects of AI on American workers and the election. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images/File)
“This hearing marks the beginning of our subcommittee’s work to oversee and inform advanced algorithms and powerful AI technology. I look forward to working with my colleagues as we explore standards and principles that make sense for us. help navigate this uncharted territory,” added Blumenthal.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., another member of the subcommittee, said she plans to ask Altman about the effect of AI on content creators, particularly the music industry. .
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“One of the biggest concerns of Tennesseans is the impact of generative AI on the entertainment industry, especially songwriters and musicians. Content creators who call Tennessee home should be able to decide whether their copyrighted songs, images, and artwork can be used to train AI models, or whether their voice and likeness can be used” , Blackburn said in an emailed statement.
“I plan to ask Altman how it plans to protect content creators when developing its AI products. We know that Big Tech platforms like YouTube accept copyrighted content without real hesitation – we we have to make sure that OpenAI and other AI platforms don’t,” she said.
Other witnesses in the hearing are Christina Montgomery, IBM’s top privacy and trust official, and New York University professor emeritus Gary Marcus.
Subcommittee chair Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he hoped to “explore common sense standards and principles to help us navigate this uncharted territory.” (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky/File)
In addition to his Senate testimony on Tuesday, Altman is also expected to give a closed-door briefing to House members on AI.
Altman’s latest high-level visit to Washington came with an invitation from Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss AI at the White House with the CEOs of Google, Microsoft and Anthropic.
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In a reading sent after that meeting, the White House revealed that President Joe Biden made a surprise appearance “to emphasize that companies have a fundamental responsibility to ensure their products are safe and secure before they are deployed or made public”.