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.
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“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.
Lobbyists on the Sidelines—for Now
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.
“I think it’s nonpartisan. The partisan elements within our parties don’t have a reason yet for this to become partisan, and I think we need to think through and come up with good policy before that happens, because then it’ll get infinitely harder to get something done,” Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, says of regulating AI. He’s braced for potential legislative land mines from the tech lobby. “I’m sure they’re coming.”
Besides Heinrich, Schumer’s helping orchestrate these private AI tutorials with Senate Republicans Todd Young of Indiana and Mike Rounds of South Dakota. The group’s goal is lofty, to collectively educate the Senate while empowering lawmakers to tackle the minutiae of what may be the most complex technology humans have ever encountered.
While Hickenlooper was frustrated by the lack of substance at the first briefing, others are more patient with colleagues who are “at different spots along the learning curve,” says Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia.
“I think there were a lot of senators where it was needed because a lot of the senators in that room were where I was nine months ago,” says Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It takes a number of these sessions before you kind of get it.”
An AI Briefing Bombshell
The four senators at the heart of this AI lecture series understand criticisms of the first one. It was “kinda an AI 101,” Rounds says. The bipartisan group of senators has already vetted the next speaker—who I can only assume is scheduled to outline scenarios of war, peace, and global domination—after the Senate’s two-week July 4 recess.
“The next one with regard to what we’re doing offensively and defensively within the Department of Defense is really the one that’s going to wake people up and let them see how critical it is that we continue to allow AI to be enhanced in the United States,” Rounds says.
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In contrast to Congress’ battle with TikTok and its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, lawmakers aren’t exempting Silicon Valley firms from their AI inquiries. But when it comes to the military, Rounds and the others fear the AI rush among America’s adversaries, something they plan to highlight for their colleagues in the next briefing, which won’t be open to the public.
“This is really important to get this one as well-attended as possible,” Rounds says. “The speaker that’s going to be laying this out, we’ve already had a report from him. It’s a great educational opportunity. It’s one that I’m really trying to get as many members of my conference to come to as possible because the speaker does a very good job of laying it out in some detail.”
While Schumer outlined a sprawling blueprint of his goals, Rounds and the others say they’re as much on a listening tour as they are tour managers for this summer’s AI lecture circuit.
“What the idea is, is to get these ideas out so people can vet them,” Rounds says. “I’m encouraging people to bring their ideas in, and every committee should have the opportunity to look at what’s critical to their committee. This is just a great way to allow for all of those to kind of find a central location where we can work our way through a lot of them.”
A Senate Odd Couple
Even with some senators still catching up on the basics of AI, Schumer and his bipartisan allies were overall happy with their first all-senators meeting. “Listen, if you’re delivering a lecture to scores of senators, they’ll be at varying degrees of expertise, so I actually think it was appropriate for the audience,” Senator Young of Indiana says.
Young has worked with Schumer before, and they hope their past success portends good things here. In 2019, Young and Schumer began negotiating the Endless Frontier Act, which was focused on increasing US competitiveness against China. It evolved into the US Innovation & Competition Act. Then it became America Competes Act, and finally the CHIP Act–and even the CHIPS+ Act—before President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law last year.
While negotiations started with Young and Schumer, they didn’t end there. Rather, the pair heard input from other congressional committees and worked that into the final package.
“That was the most utilization I’ve seen of the committee process since I’ve been in Congress, and I think this has an opportunity to be even more inclusive,” Young says. “Senator Schumer and I started off with legislation, but then we drew extensively from different committees of jurisdiction. I think that this effort will be even more decentralized.”
While many senators will introduce their own AI measures, Young says the bipartisan effort is aimed at getting lawmakers on the same page.
“So some of us may have bills, but the real point of emphasis here will be on crowding in ideas from others, so I think this will be more committee-focused,” Young says.
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Schumer’s Democratic partner in the AI talks is Heinrich, the New Mexico Democrat, who says the closed-door meetings in the Senate are meant to help strengthen the Senate’s long-standing committees.
“I think where we are right now is encouraging everyone through the normal processes,” Heinrich says. “Different committees are going to have very different jurisdictions.”
And there are a lot of committees and many AI-related issues to tackle. For example, the Judiciary Committee will need to sort out copyright questions, the Armed Services Committee will handle questions of war, peace, and nuclear Armageddon (concerns Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has raised). And the Education Committee will handle AI’s potential impact on public education.
Lawmakers—and their staffs—also have to pore over today’s laws to see which work and which need a reboot, like copyright law in the AI era. “Some of that, the existing law is adequate, and in other places, it’s not,” Heinrich says.
Counting Critics
For now, the AI talks have largely remained above the partisan fray. Last week, a bipartisan and bicameral group unveiled a new proposal to erect a national AI commission—comprising 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans—to address AI in a more dispassionate manner than we’ve come to expect from Congress. Even so, pro-industry critics are starting to voice their concerns over what they see as a rush to regulate.
“Putting the federal government in charge of the granular development of AI is a strategy certain to ensure that China beats us in every respect in the development of AI—and that would be catastrophic,” says Senator Ted Cruz.
Cruz is the top Republican on the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee, which has sweeping jurisdiction over the economy. The junior senator from Texas fears Congress is going to overstep and crush innovation in the name of digital protectionism.
“I think that’s foolhardy. Very few members of Congress have any idea what AI is, much less how to regulate it. There are—no doubt, there are risks and risks we need to take seriously, but there are also enormous potential productivity gains. And the last thing we want to do is turn technology innovation into the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Cruz says.
Like his 99 colleagues, Cruz will get his say in due time. While the bipartisan AI working group isn’t focused on producing a massive, catch-all AI bill, its members know that such legislation could be the final outcome, following on the heels of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
If that happens, it will be legislation the likes of which the Senate has never seen, in part because AI appears to be all-encompassing.
“It’s going to be big. It’s going to be big, and our hope is that all of the relevant committees do the hard work of figuring out where those things are,” Heinrich says. “Hopefully, we can get on the same page on a number of those things and then package that together.”