A bipartisan group of senators unveiled their game plan Wednesday for addressing the challenges posed by the rise of artificial intelligence — but left the nuts and bolts of regulating the technology for later.
The group of four, led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), called for $32 billion in annual spending by 2026 to “cement America’s dominance in AI,” but mostly deferred plans for specific rules of the road.
“The word for this roadmap is ‘balance,’” Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill. “… We will not solve every issue that AI poses. That’s an impossible dream.”
“Instead, we’re going to expect the committees to lay down a base of bipartisan policy that will harness AI’s potential while safeguarding its risks,” he added.
Schumer’s working group on AI, which includes Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Mike Rounds (R-SD), released its long-awaited report, “Driving US Innovation in Artificial Intelligence,” while calling for a comprehensive federal data privacy law for AI.
“The legislation should address issues related to data minimization, data security, consumer data rights, consent and disclosure, and data brokers,” their report said.
Schumer also lauded legislation the Senate Rules Committee is looking to advance pertaining to the use of deepfakes to influence elections.
But other Al-related issues, including national security, job displacement, discrimination, copyright infringement, and safety, were largely left unremarked on.
“The committees know how to do this. And that is why we have always looked at the committees. We’re not kicking the ball down the road. That’s the next logical step,” Schumer said.
In terms of funding, the senators urged Congress to start with $8 billion this fiscal year, followed by $16 billion in fiscal year 2025, before hitting the recommended $32 billion level, first put forward in a 2021 report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
“Even if we were to put $32 billion in today, we could not spend it all today because we want to make sure that we spend it responsibly,” Rounds explained.
Specific funding would entail cross-government research and development on AI, shoring up the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s infrastructure, supporting advancements in “AI-augmented chemical and biological synthesis” and more.
The report encourages the House and Senate appropriations committees and the White House to further iron out specifics of how that increased funding should be utilized.
Wednesday’s report concludes a roughly year-long study of AI with the goal of concocting legislation to guide use of the blockbuster technology.
Those efforts drew widespread attention amid the rise of ChatGPT and other language-learning models that can emulate human expression with stunning precision.
Last year, Schumer began convening several high-profile forums with tech gurus such as Tesla, X and SpaceX head Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.
Meanwhile, the European Union has already begun implementing regulatory regimes mandating transparency around data collection and operation procedures.
“Knowing that to rush this, as some other countries have done and then had to backtrack, is not the way to do this. We have to have some humility as well as urgency,” Schumer said.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives unveiled a bipartisan task force to explore the challenges posed by AI.
“I plan to meet with [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson [R-La.] in the very near future,” Schumer said, “to see how we can make this bipartisan effort bicameral.”
