The Vice Chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus said today that the ongoing fight in the House over the speaker’s gavel has caused everything to “slow down to stop” – including critical AI legislation that many lawmakers wanted to move on during this calendar year.
As House Republicans grapple with electing a new leader after ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a historic vote on Oct. 3, Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said that he and his colleagues are going to have to play “a lot of catch up” in areas in which Congress has a “huge agenda,” such as AI.
“Everything is slowed down to stop, so we’re not working on appropriations bills … we have a huge agenda there, including artificial intelligence,” Rep. Beyer said during an Oct. 16 Washington Post Live event. “And my deep hope is that there’ll be a bipartisan path forward this week, or next week or sometime soon. And then we’re going to have a lot of catch up to do.”
The Democratic lead for the AI caucus said he would like to see Congress pass “two or three” AI bills this calendar year, but with the ongoing fight for the top leadership post in the House it’s unclear if that will happen. Especially because the two chambers must still work together to fully fund the government. The continuing resolution that passed hours before a government shutdown expires on Nov. 17.
“Aside from the speaker fight, I would love to see us do two or three important things this year – this calendar year. There’s a wildly bipartisan bill, introduced by the four leaders of the AI caucus, called the CREATE AI Act that creates an enormous, government driven, not funded but driven, database of reliable data for all the scientists and the researchers and students to use,” Rep. Beyer said. At 73 years old, the congressman has gone back to school to get a master’s degree in AI from George Mason University.
He continued, adding, “That’s not so much regulation, but it is really important to make sure that AI is being used responsibly and that’s something that could pass this year.”
Rep. Beyer applauded the Biden administration for the recent work it has put in gaining voluntary commitments on AI development from the private sector, but also acknowledged that it won’t be enough in the long run.
“It’s a start, and I think it’s a durable start,” Rep. Beyer said. “Is it ultimately going to be enough? No, of course not. But when you don’t know how to regulate AI, and when you don’t really know what are the downsides [and] risks of AI, there’s lots of speculation but nothing hard.”
“In the long run, I don’t think society’s going to trust the AI experts to do it on a voluntary basis,” he added.
A piece of legislation the House and Senate have been working on together to strengthen AI within industry, Rep. Beyer said, requires government contracting in the defense sector – and in virtually every sector – to leverage the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework, which the congressman said is at the moment “the gold standard in terms of doing AI in an ethical and socially responsible way.”
“And on top of that the president just last week announced that he’s going to do that by executive order, at least for the time, being rolled out later this month,” Rep. Beyer added.
The lawmaker also made a broad call today for the United Nations to step up and create an international agreement on AI – similar to what global powers have signed on climate change through the Paris Agreement.
“I would love to see the United Nations in particular step up and say that this is going to be … one of the top two or three priorities in the coming decade and not wait two or three years to start but to start right now,” Rep. Beyer said.
“We have models: the Paris Agreement on climate … We need to do the same thing with AI,” he said.
