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Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer will invite senior tech executives, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to an AI policy forum in September during the Congress is struggling to create guard rails for the rapidly evolving technology.
Schumer (DN.Y.) earlier this summer announced plans for “AI Insight Forums,” which he says will serve as the basis for his efforts to create bipartisan legislation to address the risks of artificial intelligence. The guest list for the first forum, scheduled for September 13, includes many of the most influential executives shaping AI, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The Senate leader has argued that given the technology’s rapid evolution, a new legislative process is needed to address the risks and benefits of AI. He has suggested bringing together many experts with different perspectives on the technology in a single room to gather input on how Congress should draft AI legislation.
Axios first reported on the guest list for the September forum.
In a June speech before the Senate, Schumer called these gatherings “the first of their kind.” He said they provide lawmakers with an opportunity to listen to experts and then translate those ideas into legislative action.
“They have to be the first of their kind,” he said, “because AI is moving so fast, will change our world so fundamentally, is so much deeper in complexity than almost anything else we’ve looked at, and because you the legislative history is missing.” in Congress that have other issues like the military or education or healthcare.”
The forum comes amid a spate of activity in Washington regulating AI, a technology that has come under more scrutiny from lawmakers since the launch of ChatGPT last year.
Lawmakers have participated in private meetings, dinners and briefings with AI experts – including CEOs of the companies they want to regulate. Some consumer advocates have warned that the multiple efforts to educate policymakers about AI have brought congressmen uncomfortably close to Silicon Valley companies trying to influence legislation to favor their business practices.