Announcer sort supports cspan. Giving you a front row seat to democracy. Id announcer Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer urged congress to implement regulations on Artificial Intelligence technology. Saying, failure to act means Ai Technology would go unchecked and could harm the nations security and democracy. The centers for strategic studies in washington, d. C. Hosted the discussion welcome to csis. I am tom pritzker. We are a Bipartisan National Security think tank. That is why senator schumer chose csis for this speech. It is an honor to introduce senator schumer. I dont need to go through the senators resume, but i would like to go through some quick background. My background with senator schumer is that he is both a thinker and doer. That makes him a bit of a rare person. Both worms. For this moment of Artificial Intelligence, those characteristics may well be missioncritical. To be a modern economy, we must have innovation driving both the creation and the adoption in the technology. Our economy is going to depend on it. Our Economic Growth and our National Security will depend on the dynamism of innovation and the private sector. You know what senator schumer did with of the act. You may not know what he did for quantum computing so let me tell a quick story. In the pre pandemic times we had a small private dinner here at csis with a group from the university of chicago. They were building an effort around quantum computing. As senator schumer attended the dinner and listened carefully and listened not only to what they had to say about their need but he also asked why chicago. Senator, that seed has grown. They created the Quantum Initiative and that team became one of the five centers of excellence. What you may not know is the most recent ibm and google announced 150 million of grants for a partnership between that team and Tokyo University to advance the same quantum computing. We now see an example of the government as a catalyst for the private capital to partner with University World to further innovation. I give this as an example of a promising way forward for american innovation. Theres enormous energy in the universities and in our hightech industries. The government should encourage this unique american strength and a much wider and more systematic way. The foundation of our real National Security is the dynamism of our economy and the Research Institutes into the quality of the education and importantly the agility and skills of our private sector. If we dont nourish of these thh the growth mindset, we are playing defense. Today we are here to talk about Artificial Intelligence so for the past two months ive been at two conferences that focus on the topic. First was a conference organized by caltech and university of chicago around the use of ei or science. The participants were from the Major Research universities and others around the country. In that room the participants were palpably excited about the incredible benefits to society that would come from Artificial Intelligence. More recently i was at a conference around the topic of ai. Those are the guys that hope to make money off of this. In that room and requesting the participants were palpably concerned about the future of what we were going into. The problem is they are both right. Navigating this is one of the challenges and opportunities facing the United States. A Pivotal Moment youve seen the act, youve heard about the senators engagement with quantum computings with the senators here to talk about today is the Artificial Intelligence that may be one of the greatest challenges we face in decades to come. So senator thank you for doing this. [applause] its great to be here. Its a pleasure to be in a room of so many leaders from the world of innovation and tech business academia, labor and the yard. Now we come together at a moment of revolution, not one of weapons or political power but a revolution in science and understanding that will change humanity. Its been said with a locomotive thelocomotive and electricity dd for human muscle a year and a half ago Artificial Intelligence is doing for you today as we speak. But the effective ai is more and more profound and will certainly occur over a shorter period of time. The idea isnt supercomputers with humanlike behavior have long been with us in the movies and Science Fiction and art, but now what once lived only in our imaginations exist in our daytoday lives. Thanks to the remarkable innovation and Computing Power and speed of the semi conductors in the size of the data set in the field and the networks we can say with confidence that the age of ai is here and it is here to stay. And we are still just at the beginning. Some experts predict that just in a few years the world could be unrecognizable from the world we live in today. Thats what ai is. Change with such blistering speed may seem frightening to some but if applied correctly, it promises to transform life on earth for the better. It will shape how we fight the disease and tackle hunger, manager lives and enrich our minds and ensure peace. But there are real dangers. Job displacement, misinformation, the new age of weapons, the risk of being unable to manage the technology altogether. We have no choice but to acknowledge the changes were coming and in many cases are already here. We ignore them at our own peril. Many would ignore it because it is so complex but with ai, we cannot be ostriches picking our heads in the sand. The question is what role does congress and the federal government have in this new revolution . Are we capable of playing a proactive role in promoting the growth . Can Congress Work to maximize the benefits while protecting the American People and all of humanity from its novel risks . I think the answers to these questions is an emphatic yes. If the government doesnt step in, who will fill its place . Individuals into the private sector cant do the work of protecting the country even if Many Developers have good intentions there will always be rogue actors, unscrupulous companies, foreign adversaries that will seek to harm us. Companies may not be willing to insert guardrails on their own, certainly not if the competitors are not forced to do so. That is why we are here today. I believe Congress Must join the ai resolution and we need your help. Its unlike Anything Congress has dealt with before. Its not like labor or healthcare or defense were congress had a long history to work off. Experts are not even sure which questions they should be asking. At the last two years in congress have been the most successful for the last 30 years. Historic infrastructure legislation. The American Rescue plan into the largest clean energy package. Most of these were done with bipartisan support under my leadership as majority leader so dont count congress out. I know many of you have spent months calling on us to act. I hear you loud and clear and many colleagues on both sides of the aisle hear you loud and clear as well. So today i want to outline a twopart proposal to move us forward on the ai. One part on framework, one part on process. First Congress Needs a framework for action. What should the framework be . What issues should we look at to prepare legislation. With over 100 developers, scientists, researchers i would like to share my framework for action. I call it the state innovation framework for ai policy. The safe innovation framework. I call it that because innovation must be the north star. Northstar. I call it that because the u. S. Has always been a leader in innovating on the greatest technologies that shaped the modern world. But if people think Ai Innovation hasnt done safely if there are not adequate guardrails in place it would stifle or even hold innovation altogether. With safe innovation we must seek. Second Congress Must also invent a new process to develop the right policies to implement the framework. Ai moves so quickly and changes at mere exponentially and there is such little legislative history on this issue so when a new process is called, the traditional approach of the Committee Hearings play an essential role but wont on their own. We will need help from creators, innovators and experts. That is why later this year i will invite top ai experts to come to congress and convene a series of firstever insight for the unique approach to develop the legislation. I will talk a little bit about these forms in a moment but lets return to the framework first. Let me repeat the framework must never lose sight of what a mess to be the northstar, innovation. Americas by nature a country of innovators. Weve reduced over 590,000 applications since 2021 and 60 by market cap it was america that revolutionized the automobile and first to land on the moon to unleash the internet and create the microchip and make ai possible. Ai could be the most spectacular innovation yet a force that could ignite an era ofs discoveries and might so we must come up with a plan that encourages, not stifles innovation in this new world of ai and that means asking some very important questions. What is the proper balance between collaboration and Competition Among the entities developing ai. Two, how much federal intervention on the tax side and the spending side must there be. His federal intervention to encourage necessary at all or should we let the private sector develop on its own . Three what is the proper balance between private ai systems and open ai systems and finally, how do we ensure innovation and competition is open to everyone, not just the few big powerful companies . The government must play a role in ensuring open, free, and fair competition. In short the first issue we must tackle is encouraging not to stifling innovation. But if people dont think innovation can be done safely that will slow the development and prevent us from moving forward so my safe innovation framework calls for security, accountability, protecting our foundations and last, explain ability the last being one of the most important technical issues at all. First comes to security for the country, for american leadership, and for the workforce. We do not know what Artificial Intelligence will be capable of two years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now. In the hands of the foreign adversaries especially autocracies or domestic groups interested in extortionist financial gain or political upheaval the dangers could be extreme. We need to do everything we can to instill guardrails that make sure these groups cannot use our advances for illicit and bad purpose but we also need security for americas workforce because ai is already disrupting the weight tens of millions of people make a many assume these jobs are always safe. Erosion of the middle class already one of americas Serious Problems to get much worse with ai ignored and dont take measures to prevent job loss. Globalization is a good cautionary tale. Many herald it as a turning point for prosperity and growth. Decades later most people agree globalization on balance increased wealth but at the cost of tens of millions of jobs shipped overseas. While some community splurged others were hollowed out and remain so to this day. Congress is far too slow to aid americans who need help with these changes. Lets not repeat the same mistakes when it comes to ai. To prevent that from happening we will need everyone, everyone at the table workers businesses educators researchers. This is going to be a huge challenge. And all of us must be part of the solution. Ai policies must also promote accountability. Otherwise what will stop companies from using ai to track our Kids Movement inundate harmful advertisement damaged their selfimage or their mental health. Whats to shop for business from using ai to exploit people with addictions or financial problems or serious mental almost is. How can we protect the ip intellectual property of our content creators are musicians are riders and artists . Their ideas or their livelihoods and if someone uses another person or companies i. T. We need accountability to ensure that they get their due credit and compensation. Without guardrails in place regulating how ai is developed and without making clear that certain practices should be out of bounds we risk living in a total freeforall which nobody wants. Nor do we want a future where ai away at americas foundation. Ai neither supports nor opposes the causes of liberty, civil rights, justice and if we dont program these algorithms to align with our values they could be used to undermine it democratic organizations especially our electoral processes. If we dont set the norms for ais proper uses others will. The Chinese Communist party which has little regard for the norms of the democratic governance will leap ahead of us and set the rules of the game for ai. Democracy will be on the steep decline. Ai could be used to john this and totally discredit our elections as early as next year. We consume it in a world where political campaigns regular diploid fabricated yet totally believable and convincing images and footage of democratic or republican candidates distorting their statements greatly harming their election chances to that chat box cannot be deployed at a master scale to target millions of individual voters for political persuasion and once damaging information its hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Our adversaries embraces technology and this is not about imposing one viewpoint. Ensuring people engage with democracy without outside interference. We must move quickly to develop guardrails in line with democracy to encourage the nations of the world. Without taking steps to make sure ai preserves their countrys foundations we risk the survival of our democracy. Finally explained ability. One of the most technically complicated issues we face are perhaps the most important of all. Explained ability is about transparency. When you ask an ai system a question it gives you an answer and perhaps the answer you werent expecting you want to know where the answer came from. You should be able to ask. Why did ai chooses to answer over some other answer . That also could have been a possibility and it should be done in a simple way so all users can understand how these systems come up with answers. Congress should make this a top priority and companies and experts must take the lead in helping us solve this very important problem because without explained ability we may not be able to move forward. If the user of an ai system cannot determine the source of the sentence for the paragraph or the idea and cant get some explanation of why it was chosen or other possibilities we may not be able to accomplish their other goals of accountability, security and foundation. Explained ability is perhaps the greatest challenge we face with ai. Even experts dont know why these algorithms the answers they do. No every day user of ai will understand the evolving algorithms that determine what ai systems in response to a question or a text and the course these algorithms represent the highest level of intellectual property for ai developers. Forcing companies to reveal reveal stifle innovation and power ever series to use them for ill. Unfortunate the average person does not need to know the inner workings of these algorithms but we do need to require companies to develop the system with simple and understandable terms that users understand why the system a particular answer where it came from. Its very complicated. Very important and here we will need the ingenuity of the experts and companies to come up with a fair solution that congress can use to break open a ais black box. Innovation first but with security, accountability and explained ability. These are the principals that i believe will ensure that Ai Innovation is safe and responsible and has the appropriate guardrails. If we received these priorities in mind i think congress can help ensure that ai works and humanity is good. I think we can go a long way toward keeping people safe. Now let me share my second proposal. A new legislative approach for translating this framework into legislative action. Later this fall i will convene the top minds of Artificial Intelligence here in congress for a series of ai forums to lay down a new foundation for ai policies. We need the best of the best sitting at the table. The top ai developers, executives, scientists, advocates community leaders, workers National Security experts all together in one room doing years of work in a manner of months. The panel will include people of different views some skeptics and we want to experts in each subject or we have questions and problems to sit around the table debate the major challenges him forced consensus about the way to go. Opposing views will be welcome and even encouraged because this issue is so important that all ideas get a chance to beat the table. Our job as legislators will be to listen to the experts and learn as much as we can so we can translate these ideas and take legislative action. Each inside forum will focus on the biggest issues of ai including first asking the right questions. Ai innovation copyright and ip use cases and riskmanagement. National security, guarding against doomsday scenarios ais role in our social world transparency explainability in privacy and liability. These insight forms at the first of their kind but they have to be the first o