President Donald Trump thinks tech companies should ‘self-police’ AI development, but some senators from both parties believe Congress should participate in the regulation.
One day after Trump signed an accord with top tech firms for them to develop “its own technology safely”, a Senate subcommittee heard the warnings of AI experts – and took them to heart.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said during a Wednesday hearing that he rejects the idea that AI companies should dictate the rules.
“No to the antitrust exemption, no to them writing the regulations, no to them colluding any further,” he said. “I wonder if it’s not time to get back to the good old-fashioned American principle, which is if you break it, you pay for it. If you cause damage, you clean it up.”
During the hearing of the Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census, Democratic and Republican lawmakers agreed that American companies shouldn’t fall behind global competitors in the AI race.
“We need to stay ahead of China. I’m not suggesting in any way that we stop or slow unnecessarily our development of AI,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn,.
“But the idea that we can do it safely with a standard and an agency to enforce that standard, I think, is a basic requirement here,” he added.