Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared earlier than a US Senate committee to speak in regards to the dangers and potential of AI language fashions. Altman, together with many senators, known as for worldwide requirements for synthetic intelligence. He additionally urged the US to manage the expertise and arrange a brand new company, very like the Food and Drug Administration, to manage AI.
For an AI coverage nerd like myself, the Senate listening to was each encouraging and irritating. Encouraging as a result of the dialog appears to have moved previous selling wishy-washy self-regulation and on to guidelines that would truly maintain firms accountable. Frustrating as a result of the controversy appears to have forgotten the previous five-plus years of AI coverage. I simply printed a narrative taking a look at all the present worldwide efforts to manage AI expertise. You can learn it right here.
I’m not the one one who feels this manner.
“To suggest that Congress starts from zero just plays into the industry’s favorite narrative, which is that Congress is so far behind and doesn’t understand technology—how could they ever regulate us?” says Anna Lenhart, a coverage fellow on the Institute for Data Democracy and Policy at George Washington University, and a former Hill staffer.
In truth, politicians within the final Congress, which ran from January 2021 to January 2023, launched a ton of laws round AI. Lenhart put collectively this neat checklist of all of the AI rules proposed throughout that point. They cowl all the things from danger assessments to transparency to knowledge safety. None of them made it to the president’s desk, however on condition that buzzy (or, to many, scary) new generative AI instruments have captured Washington’s consideration, Lenhart expects a few of them to be revamped and make a reappearance in a single kind or one other.
Here are just a few to control.
Algorithmic Accountability Act
This invoice was launched by Democrats within the US Congress and Senate in 2022, pre-ChatGPT, to deal with the tangible harms of automated decision-making methods, equivalent to ones that denied folks ache drugs or rejected their mortgage functions.