U.S. senators met Tuesday for an exclusive briefing on artificial intelligence in a bid to forge a plan to minimize the risks associated with this growing technology.
The first-ever briefing on this topic was announced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) the day before on Twitter.
Speaking at the first of three briefings planned, Schumer highlighted the need for lawmakers to educate themselves on AI and forge a bipartisan plan to maximize its benefits and mitigate “its potential and very real risks.”
Recently several AI pioneers and industry leaders have sounded the alarm about the technology.
As The Dallas Express reported, an open letter signed by notables like Geoffrey Hinton and Sam Altman appeared earlier this month, calling for urgent action from lawmakers to regulate AI. It spoke of the existential threat of AI and claimed the issue warranted the same attention as nuclear war and pandemics.
Similarly, U.S. financial regulators have moved to rein in the swiftly evolving AI platforms, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, currently writing algorithms for financial institutions, as The Dallas Express covered.
Beyond the financial sector, AI has proliferated across various industries.
In terms of military capabilities and surveillance, China in particular has embraced the use of AI. This resulted in former Google CEO Eric Schmidt advising Congress to redesign the U.S. military and enable it for AI technology, Bloomberg reported last month.
With the upcoming presidential election, candidates’ campaigns are engaged in a sort of arms race to leverage AI to their advantage, according to Fox News.
But legislators warn there is a dark side to using AI as a political tool — the spread of “disinformation” and deepfakes.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Fox News, “There are certainly going to be some viral videos of either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, and it’s going to change votes, but it’s not going to be them. It’s going to be a complete figment of an AI creator’s imagination.”
As Vice President Kamala Harris explained last month at a meeting with CEOs from Google, Microsoft, and more, AI might also be used to mislead U.S. consumers, according to Fox News. She urged the private sector to protect Americans from these abusive practices.
Similar concerns were voiced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who told Fox News, “On a scale of one to 10, I would put my fear at 10 so far as the potential abuses for impersonation, false visual images, deepfakes, voice cloning. Consumers deserve to know when the deepfakes and cloned voices occur.”