Excerpted from a FedScoop Blog by Rebecca Heilweil
Amid concerns about U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee on July 31 advanced a bevy of AI-focused bipartisan bills, though some fault lines emerged that could signal growing tension between the parties on the issue.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who chairs the committee, opened the session by setting the global stakes for AI development, noting that in the U.S., the technology “may increase annual GDP growth by $1.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion per decade, or even more, but China and other countries are investing hundreds of billions of dollars and taking actions to gain economic and national security advantage from AI.”
As the U.S. private sector “leads the way on this technology,” Cantwell added, “Congress should build good strong public-private partnership collaboration to drive innovation even further. As policymakers, we must make sure that emerging technologies work as intended and reliable in order to scale up this deployment.”
The package of bills taken up by Cantwell’s committee included several endorsed by OpenAI (including the Future of AI Innovation Act, the CREATE AI Act, and the NSF AI Education Act) and others now backed by Google (including the VET AI Act and the TEST AI Act). Nine AI bills were ultimately advanced Wednesday.
During the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, broadly condemned several of the bills, arguing that the legislation would end up over-regulating the American AI industry. He accused companies of using “absurd exaggeration that would make Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov laugh” to push for legislation that would favor them, but would result in stifling innovation in the U.S. and enabling other countries — namely China — to take the lead on the technology.
A Cruz amendment to eliminate President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence was voted down.
Several AI bills, some with amendments, were passed out of committee. Those bills include the CREATE AI bill, which would formally establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR); the NSF AI Education Act; the Small Business Artificial Intelligence Training and Toolkit Act; and the Artificial Intelligence Public Awareness and Education Campaign Act.
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