Young crafts road map for policy on artificial intelligence

U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., welcomes the opportunities set to be unleashed by artificial intelligence (AI) while simultaneously urging the new technology be carefully rolled out to minimize any potential harms to Americans and national security.

Young is among four members of the Bipartisan Senate AI Working Group that’s spent the past year closely evaluating the promise and perils of AI in hundreds of stakeholder meetings and nine all-senator Insight Forums focused on specific AI impacts.

The group’s 31-page final report — co-written by Young; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-Nev.; and U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. — provides a kind of road map for the Senate to use as it crafts AI policy this year and in the future.

“The rapid pace of AI innovation brought this bipartisan working group together to consider how policymakers can ensure the incredible and promising aspects of AI are able to flourish while guarding against its risks,” Young said.

“This road map represents the most comprehensive and impactful bipartisan recommendations on artificial intelligence ever issued by the legislative branch. Our goal is to ensure the United States maintains its leadership in AI innovation, enabling the American people to reap the substantial national security, economic and societal benefits of an AI-driven future.”

The report highlights a number of potential policy priorities the Senate may want to consider advancing in tandem with the House and the president, including:

• Increasing funding for AI innovation to propel U.S. leadership in AI, maintain America’s global competitiveness, and perform cutting-edge AI research and development.
• Ensuring enforcement of existing laws for AI, including addressing any gaps or unintended harmful bias; prioritizing the development of testing standards to understand potential AI harms; and developing use case-specific requirements for AI transparency.
• Encouraging a conscientious consideration of the impact AI will have on the U.S. workforce, including the potential for job displacement and the need to upskill and retrain workers.
• Bolstering national security by leading globally in the adoption of emerging technologies and addressing national security threats, risks and opportunities for AI.
• Addressing challenges posed by deepfakes related to election content and nonconsensual intimate images, as well as examining the impacts of AI on professional content creators and the journalism industry.
• Identifying ways to ensure higher education institutions and businesses can compete in AI development, in part by reviewing federal statutes and regulations that may affect innovation and by fully funding the National AI Research Resource.
• Establishing a strong, comprehensive federal data privacy framework.
• Mitigating the threat of potential long-term risk scenarios.

“No technology offers more promise to our modern world than artificial intelligence. But AI also presents a host of new policy challenges,” Schumer said. “Harnessing the potential of AI demands an all-hands-on-deck approach and that’s exactly what our bipartisan AI working group has been leading.”

“After talking to advocates, critics, academics, labor groups, civil rights leaders, stakeholders, developers, and more, our working group was able to identify key areas of policy that have bipartisan consensus. Now, the work continues with our committees, chairmen, and ranking members to develop and advance legislation with urgency and humility.”

The full report of the AI working group is available online at nwi.com.