240311WaPoHouseAiTaskForceLongView LimaStrong, Cristiano, ‘House AI task force leaders take long view on

240311WaPoHouseAiTaskForceLongView

LimaStrong, Cristiano, ‘House AI task force leaders take long view on regulating the tools,’ The Washington Post; Washington, D.C.. 11 Mar 2024: A.15.  

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House leaders took a key step toward hatching a game plan on artificial intelligence last month by launching a bipartisan task force, which will issue recommendations for how Congress could boost AI innovation while keeping the tools in check.

But the lawmakers leading the effort told The Technology 202 in a joint interview that implementing a full response will probably be a lengthy undertaking as they consider the technology’s vast impact across elections, national security, the economy and more.

Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), who was tapped by House leaders to chair the group, pointed to Europe’s efforts to agree on a “comprehensive” AI law as a cautionary tale.

“If you look at the attempts in Europe to create an omnibus bill for the regulation of AI, you’ll see some of the fallacies in that,” said Obernolte, one of the few lawmakers with computer science bona fides. “They’ve had to rewrite that bill several times as the face of AI has changed.”

“We don’t envision a 5,000-page bill that deals with 57 topics and then we’re done with AI,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), the task force’s co-chair. “It’s going to be a multiyear process, and there’ll be a variety of different bills that try to tackle different aspects of AI.”

The task force is set to release a report by the end of year, but that doesn’t preclude more immediate legislative action on discrete issues, Obernolte and Lieu said.

Like Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Obernolte pointed to the risks that AI-generated content poses to elections as one area with potential for fast action.

“There should be broad bipartisan agreement that no one should be allowed to impersonate a candidate with AI … so we’re going to be looking at what we can do to tighten up the regulations to try and prevent that,” he said.

Lieu seconded the sentiment and floated the idea of criminal and civil “enhancements” to make fines or jail time steeper if certain crimes are perpetrated using AI.

“One way to provide more deterrence is to say, look, if you use AI to impersonate a voice that defrauds someone, [that] would enhance the punishment that you may get,” he said.

Obernolte said he’s “hopeful” that Congress will prioritize taking up the Create AI Act, which aims to fully stand up the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource. The White House in January launched a pilot version of the center, which is set to run for two years.

In the Senate, Schumer has come under fire from some colleagues for keeping his AI “insight forums” closed to the public. (In response, he has noted that the chamber has held many public committee hearings on AI over the years.)

In the House, Obernolte and Lieu said they are planning to have both public and private sessions to dig into the many facets of AI.

“We want to have open meetings in a traditional hearing format to make sure that we’re being transparent with the public,” Obernolte said. “But we’re also going to have some closed meetings … because it’s very important to me that everyone feels comfortable asking questions that could come off as ignorant.”

While Schumer’s bipartisan AI working group has yet to unveil any proposals or legislative text, he predicted in June that there would be action from the Senate in “months” not “years.”

House leaders, meanwhile, did not launch the task force until nearly a year after Schumer unveiled his plans, prompting concern from some members that the chamber was absent from the debate.

Obernolte and Lieu pushed back on those suggestions.

“We’re going to chip away at this over the next several years, and we can do that because there are short-term harms, medium-term harms and long-term harms that need to be mitigated,” Obernolte said. “I don’t think that that’s inconsistent with what the Senate is doing at all.”

Their offices have had “informal contacts over the last year” with the leaders of Schumer’s working group, he added, but said they “are very aware that we want to work with them and I think they’re very open to working with us.”

Lieu agreed: “We’re just getting started.”

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