Artificial intelligence town halls? House committee weighs new approach before writing AI rules
The House Homeland Security Committee may host town hall meetings for lawmakers on artificial intelligence and could bring in tech experts to help lawmakers better understand rapidly evolving technology before writing rules to govern it.
During a Wednesday hearing focused on how AI can be used to secure and defend the U.S., lawmakers acknowledged a new format may help them get their arms around a deeply complex set of issues.
“What I may do is have a town hall type thing, where we’re the town hall and they’re on the [dais] and we’re just asking questions,” Rep. Mark Green, Homeland Security Committee chairman and Tennessee Republican, said during Wednesday’s hearing. “I think that would be more informative. And maybe some presentations, so to speak, on data poisoning for AI and all that kind of stuff.”
The town hall format would be familiar to tech experts who frequently field requests from Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer convened AI “insight forums” starting last year. The New York Democrat also worked with a group of three other lawmakers to develop comprehensive AI legislation.
Mr. Schumer’s closed-door forums attracted top tech minds such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai, and the events gave senators a chance to ask questions without the usual time constraints of formal Capitol Hill hearings.
But the forums also had their share of detractors.
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Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, criticized the forums as a “giant cocktail party … for Big Tech.” At the same time, Democratic-led committees in the Senate did not appear thrilled about the potential for Mr. Schumer’s effort to encroach on legislation under their jurisdiction.
After the Senate events, Mr. Schumer’s group last week produced an AI roadmap. It did not propose specific legislation, but did call for at least $32 billion more spending on tech research and development.
The House Homeland Security Committee’s purview is more narrow and fixated on threats involving cybersecurity, infrastructure, and America’s physical borders, among other things.
In the absence of congressional rules, President Biden is implementing an AI executive order that includes guidance for federal agencies.
Mr. Biden has also dispatched administration officials to meet with foreign governments on AI rules, including a first meeting with China’s government in Geneva last week.
Europe is pressing ahead with new AI rules. In March, the European Parliament approved the EU AI Act, which bans various AI applications such as emotion recognition and scraping of facial images.
EU states gave additional agreement to the law this week, which the Council of the EU portrayed on Tuesday as the “final green light” on the new AI rules.
