AI is defining the future, even as many US senators struggle to understand it in the present.
“It would have been better if it had been held in a room where the acoustics were better,” Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, says of a much-anticipated—if overdue—All-Senators AI briefing orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer earlier this month.
The shoddy acoustics of the first of three closed-door meetings—kept private to insulate senators from electoral pressure to perform before cameras—were far from Grassley’s biggest complaint. “I would say that the next [one] will be more valuable, because this was a very general overview,” he says.
As AI expands its foothold across industries, households, and legislative bodies—including amongst some at the Capitol itself—Congress is under pressure to act quickly, even though many lawmakers still don’t know what they’re being asked to regulate. While Schumer, the White House, and industry leaders are spotlighting the revolutionary power of artificial intelligence, it’s still unclear if this hyper-dysfunctional Congress—currently consumed by the 2024 election cycle—can address AI before it remakes our world in its generative image.
For now, AI seems to be the least partisan issue in Washington, even as today’s bipartisan optimism is coupled with bicameral fear. This otherwise divided Congress is tuned in to AI—from Nafta flashbacks as some imagine AI upending today’s already upended job market to persistent Cold War fears now trained on AI’s potential to launch nuclear strikes. And that’s to say nothing of the electoral threat posed by generative AI and increasingly sophisticated deepfakes. These dauntingly high stakes may explain the Senate’s collective shrug after Schumer’s first big, closed-door AI reveal.
“There wasn’t much there that I hadn’t heard, and that’s a pretty low bar,” says Senator John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat. “I wish it was more substantive.”
Senators inside the room when the doors closed say Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Antonio Torralba was informative, especially when answering basic—yet seismic—questions, like how does AI learn? While the briefings are secret, earlier this week Schumer delivered a highly publicized AI address in which he laid out his shiny new SAFE Innovation Framework for AI Policy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
“In many ways, we’re starting from scratch, but I believe Congress is up to the challenge,” Schumer told the crowd. “AI moves so quickly and changes at near-exponential speed, and there’s such little legislative history on this issue, so a new process is called for.”
As a once-distant future rapidly becomes our present, the overarching question is: Can the current Congress learn fast enough to adapt?
For what is likely this briefest of windows, many US senators are gathering before a vetted few AI intellectuals, unified by their earnest search for answers. The thing is, some of those answers may not exist, even as humanity—and the Senate—journeys into the algorithmic unknown.
Over the Silicon Valley tech boom of the past two decades, Congress has held many hearings—some less embarrassing than others—but when it comes to actual regulations, lawmakers have been mostly hands-off.
Schumer is now vowing to do what he and his colleagues have failed to do thus far: regulate the tech titans who have spent tens of millions of dollars all but painting the Senate in their trademarked hues. That pressure is yet another reason the doors are closed for these All-Senators AI briefings.
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