WASHINGTON – Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic‘s CEO Dario Amodei will testify on July 25 at a US Senate hearing on artificial intelligence as lawmakers consider potential regulations for the fast-growing technology, the Senate panel scheduling the hearing said on Tuesday.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law said it will hold a hearing titled “Oversight of AI: Principles for Regulation” that will include Mr. Amodei, who heads the startup backed by Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as computer science professors Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell.
“It’s our obligation to address AI’s potential threats and risks before they become real,” said Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, the subcommittee chair. “We are on the verge of a new era, with major consequences for workers, consumer privacy, and our society.”
The top Republican on the panel, Senator Josh Hawley, said “the more we learn about AI’s potential effects on our nation, the more concerned we should be. We need strong guardrails that protect consumers, workers, and families from technological development run amok.”
President Joe Biden met with the CEOs of top artificial intelligence companies in May, including Mr. Amodei, and made clear they must ensure their products are safe before they are deployed.
Separately, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday an annual defense bill is expected to have many AI-related provisions including a report on AI regulation in the financial services industry, which has used it for fraud prevention and risk management. The report would help push federal financial regulators to adopt and adapt to AI changes disrupting the industry, Mr. Schumer’s office said.
The bill would direct government agencies to conduct risk studies on AI, create an AI “bug bounty” program and require developing AI and machine learning tools “to better employ narrative intelligence technology in order to monitor and assess information campaigns by delivering comprehensive analysis of narrative themes, language and information patterns, and disinformation networks,” Mr. Schumer’s office said. – Reuters