Hello, and welcome to Eye on A.I. Last week saw further evidence that the effort to regulate A.I. in the U.S., which has lagged behind Europe and other places, including China, is now gathering momentum.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), in an address in Washington, unveiled what he called his “SAFE Innovation Framework for A.I. Policy.” SAFE is an acronym that stands for security, accountability, protecting our foundations (the F in SAFE), and explainability.
Security, Schumer said, meant security from the threat that rogue actors or hostile nations would use A.I. for “extortionist financial gain or political upheaval.” He also said it meant security for the American workforce, which might see significant job losses, particularly among the already hard-hit middle class, from the widespread deployment of generative A.I.
Accountability, he said, meant preventing the companies creating and using A.I. from doing so in ways that unfairly exploit individuals and consumers and erode creators’ intellectual property rights. He said that A.I. must be developed in ways that reinforce, rather than undermine American values—that is the foundations bit. And he said that enabling users to understand why an A.I. system arrived at any particular output was essential. Schumer rightly called explainability “perhaps the greatest challenge we face,” since computer scientists haven’t come up with great ways of unpacking the factors that weigh most heavily in the decision-making of deep learning algorithms, which underpin most of the current enthusiasm for A.I.
Finally, Schumer announced his intention to hold a series of “A.I. Insight Forums” on Capitol Hill this fall that will differ in format from traditional Congressional hearings, with the idea being to hear from experts on how best to tackle a range of issues around A.I. policy.
That all sounds good, but some, such as Ben Winters, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, questioned whether Schumer’s call for a new round of Insight Forums risked duplicating or negating the nascent efforts Congress and other parts of the U.S. government have already made over the past year on A.I. policy. Winters told the New York Times that Schumer’s approach was “frustrating and disappointing” and expressed concerns that “other stronger, more protective A.I. laws may get sidelined or delayed as the process plays out.”
Others questioned whether Schumer’s insistence that “innovation must be our North Star” could be used to justify a lighter touch regulatory regime than many critics of Big Tech think is warranted. Meanwhile, some A.I. experts pointed out that “explainability” may be too high a bar, technically, for many A.I. systems that are nonetheless useful, and also that the term itself was highly subjective, as different levels of interpretability might be called for depending on whether the information is being provided to a consumer, an A.I. developer, a company deploying A.I., or a regulator.
Jim Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that advocates for media and technology literacy and accountability for companies building tech, told me he was skeptical the federal government would act in a timely manner. “They can’t even pass privacy legislation, so what makes you think they are going to ever pass any kind of meaningful A.I. legislation?” he said.
Steyer was among a group of technology experts and civil society groups concerned about A.I. that met with President Joe Biden in San Francisco last week. This is the first time the President had held a lengthy meeting himself with A.I. experts. He had previously “dropped by” a meeting Vice President Kamala Harris held with executives from top A.I. companies at the White House in May.
Steyer characterized Biden as “really well-prepped” and “really engaged” and said that the President asked “really thoughtful questions.” “He was really focused on the implications for democracy,” Steyer said.
(The Federal Election Commission—an independent regulatory agency—just missed a chance to take stronger action against deepfake campaign ads, with its 12-person board split down the middle on a proposal to designate A.I.-made advertising "fraudulent misrepresentation of campaign authority.”)
There was a general consensus among the participants that “this is massive and has to be regulated now,” Steyer said. A.I. will have more impact potentially than even social media has had over the past two decades, Steyer believes, so the government has to be careful not to repeat the same mistakes it made with social media. That means ensuring that arguments about stifling innovation don't outweigh sensible regulation to protect democratic values and processes, privacy rights, and people’s mental health. He said he tried to impress upon the President that the government needed to move quickly on A.I., which he said Biden seemed to understand.
Common Sense is planning some big initiatives to help educators and families better understand the strengths and risks of A.I. technologies such as chatbots, a move that may ultimately help pressure companies building generative A.I. software to ensure it is safer, Steyer told me. But he’s keeping the details under wraps pending a big announcement in the coming days.
There is also likely to be a push, which Common Sense will help champion, to introduce A.I. regulation at the state level in California. This mirrors steps Common Sense and other civil society groups took in 2018 to push for passage of a data privacy law in California, hoping that would become, absent any federal action, the de facto “law of the land,” Steyer says. The logic is that tech companies don’t want to lose access to a market as large as California and so will modify their products to meet the state law, enabling people in other states to benefit from the increased protection too. This is similar to the leverage the European Union has applied on issues such as data privacy, often setting the standard for the rest of the world when it comes to regulating Big Tech.
What’s clear is that with a new push on A.I. legislation in California, multiple efforts on Capitol Hill and within the executive branch, final negotiations within the EU over its A.I. Act, and a summit in London on international governance of A.I., it promises to be a decisive autumn for A.I. regulation.
Stay tuned to Eye on A.I. as we continue to monitor this and other A.I. developments. With that, here’s the rest of this week’s A.I. news.
Jeremy Kahn
@jeremyakahn
jeremy.kahn@fortune.com
