--- title: AI Regulation Takes Baby Steps on Capitol Hill description: In Washington, it has become much easier to agree on “existential risks” than specific constraints. canonical: https://time.com/6313892/ai-congress-regulation-hearings/ author: Vera Bergengruen article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-09-14T10:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:26:36.853Z article:section: Politics og:title: AI Regulation Takes Baby Steps on Capitol Hill og:description: In Washington, it has become much easier to agree on “existential risks” than specific constraints. og:url: https://time.com/6313892/ai-congress-regulation-hearings/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt363b1568d08012c7/698a406186f68e60ca6f2c5e/congress-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: AI Insight Forum og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: AI Regulation Takes Baby Steps on Capitol Hill twitter:description: In Washington, it has become much easier to agree on “existential risks” than specific constraints. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt363b1568d08012c7/698a406186f68e60ca6f2c5e/congress-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 03:59 video:published: 2023-09-13 section: tech topics: AI regulation, Senate forum, bipartisan legislation, AI risk, open-source AI, American leadership in AI, civilizational risk, government oversight genre: news, interview excerpt tones: measured, cautious, optimistic, serious emotions: concern (medium), optimism (medium), determination (low) sentiment: neutral audience: technology professionals, policymakers, general news readers, AI industry observers people: Elon Musk organizations: U.S. Senate products: artificial intelligence transcript_source: publisher captions transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # AI Regulation Takes Baby Steps on Capitol Hill > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=c2fe4459-92a1-43c9-b4ca-d35200493f76&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Elon Musk and Lawmakers Expect AI Regulation at Some Point After Forum [Watch (HLS stream): Elon Musk and Lawmakers Expect AI Regulation at Some Point After Forum](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/D8kCGbdC.m3u8) (3:59)  _Published 2023-09-13. Senators heard from prominent technology executives and others in private Wednesday on how to accomplish the potentially impossible task of passing bipartisan legislation within the next year that encourages the rapid development of artificial intelligence and mitigates its biggest risks._ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary Senators met privately with technology executives and others to discuss how to pass bipartisan AI legislation that encourages rapid development while mitigating major risks. Participants reportedly agreed that government should play a role in regulating AI, that a regulator is needed, and that American leadership is critical. The discussion also covered tensions between risk and reward and between open-source and closed AI systems. The transcript is partly garbled, so some statements are only approximately captured. ## Key points - In the forum, every participant raised their hand when asked whether government needs to play a role in regulating AI. (00:15) - The speaker argues a regulator is needed to ensure companies take actions that are safe and in the public interest, comparing it to a referee in a sports game. (00:48) - The speaker argues regulation should be proactive rather than reactive, citing the delayed adoption of seat belts as a past example. (01:39) - The speaker describes AI as a question of civilizational significance with huge opportunities and some very big risks. (02:12) - A tension in the room was between open-source AI available to everyone and closed systems, with similar issues of risk and reward involved. (03:03) - Participants reportedly agreed unanimously that American leadership is critical and that China should not lead in AI development. (03:20) - The speaker says regulations are on the table and are a reality in this brand-new field that needs some guidance. (03:35) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:48] Forum participants and government's role. The speaker describes the diverse forum and notes unanimous agreement that government needs to play a role in AI regulation. - [00:48 to 01:39] Why a regulator is needed. The speaker compares AI oversight to a referee and argues for a regulator to keep companies acting safely. - [01:39 to 02:12] Lessons from past regulation. The speaker argues for proactive regulation, citing the seat belt example and framing AI as a civilizational question. - [02:12 to 03:03] Risk and reward tension. The speaker discusses opportunities and risks of AI and the concerns participants raised about large risks. - [03:03 to 03:59] Open source and American leadership. The discussion covers the open-source versus closed-system debate and the consensus on American leadership and regulatory guidance. ## Key quotes - [00:15] speaker: "And so I am really pleased as I as some of the people who" - [00:33] speaker: "single person raised their hands even though they had diverse" - [01:09] speaker: "I think it is important for the for similar reasons to have" - [02:27] speaker: "It's a brand-new field and I think need some guidance." - [03:27] speaker: "You don't want China leading on this?" ## Questions this video answers - Do participants in the forum agree that government should regulate AI? [00:15] - Why is a regulator needed for AI according to the speaker? [00:48] - Why should AI regulation be proactive rather than reactive? [01:39] - What tension exists between open-source and closed AI systems? [03:03] - Is American leadership in AI development considered critical? [03:20]  by [Vera Bergengruen](https://time.com/author/vera-bergengruen/)  ## Vera Bergengruen Sep 14, 2023 10:00 AM UTC Senators heard from prominent technology executives and others in private Wednesday on how to accomplish the potentially impossible task of passing bipartisan legislation within the next year that encourages the rapid development of artificial intelligence and mitigates its biggest risks.  by [Vera Bergengruen](https://time.com/author/vera-bergengruen/)  ## Vera Bergengruen Sep 14, 2023 10:00 AM UTC **At an unprecedented** closed-door meeting that brought together most of the U.S. Senate and the country’s top tech leaders on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to start simple. “I asked everyone in the room, 'Is government needed to play a role in regulating AI?'” he told reporters after the meeting. “And every single person raised their hands.” The much-hyped forum on artificial intelligence, which was closed to the press and the public, was meant to set the tone for collaboration between the world’s biggest tech companies and Congress as it seeks to pass bipartisan AI legislation within the next year. But the six-hour meeting highlighted the current state of play in Washington when it comes to AI, where it has become much easier to agree on high-level discussions on the “existential risks” posed by the rapidly evolving technology than on any specific constraints or a plan of action. That rhetorical disconnect was clear as some of the richest men in America, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, filed out of the room. Musk told reporters that the meeting “may go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization.” Others, including some among the roughly 40 Senators who didn’t attend, took a less grandiose view of the proceedings. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who skipped the event, said he refused to participate in what he called a “giant cocktail party for big tech.” Wednesday's meeting came amidst a week of frenetic activity on AI legislation. Three other Congressional hearings also brought tech executives and AI experts to Capitol Hill to debate oversight, transparency measures, and the risks that the adoption of AI tools could pose to federal agencies. Legislators put forward a series of overlapping legislative proposals for everything from an independent federal office to oversee AI and requirements for the licensing of these technologies, to liability for civil rights and privacy violations and a ban on deceptive AI-generated content in elections. So far, however, most proposals for legislation have been light on details, laying out rules for transparency and legal liability in very broad strokes. While there may be general agreement on a high-level framework that checks all the boxes–AI should be safe, effective, trustworthy, privacy-preserving, and non-discriminatory–“what that really means is that regulatory agencies will have to figure out how to give content to such principles, which will involve tough judgment calls and complex tradeoffs," says Daniel Ho, a professor who oversees an artificial intelligence lab at Stanford University and is a member of the White House's National AI Advisory Committee. Not that regulating AI is easy. Any AI legislation will have to address a dizzying range of problems, from the environmental costs of training large models to concerns over privacy, surveillance, medical applications, national security, and misinformation. This would likely leave under-staffed, resource-strapped federal regulatory agencies with the task of figuring out how to implement or enforce these rules. “That's what makes it very hard,” says Ho. There are also concerns that the recent hype over generative AI could obscure the risks posed by other AI technologies, experts say. With top tech executives like Musk, Zuckerberg and Altman often spending their time on Capitol Hill being questioned about the speculative “civilizational risks” of these technologies, there has been less attention paid to the day-to-day effects when these systems go astray, like the documented cases of facial recognition software misidentifying someone who has been arrested. In another hearing this week, tech executives urged a Senate Judiciary subcommittee to set up an emergency brake for AI systems that control critical infrastructure to ensure that they can’t cause harm. “If a company wants to use AI to, say, control the electrical grid or all of the self-driving cars on our roads or the water supply… we need a safety brake, just like we have a circuit breaker in every building and home in this country,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said on Tuesday. "Maybe it's one of the most important things we need to do so that we ensure that the threats that many people worry about remain part of science fiction and don’t become a new reality.” Last week, the two leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Hawley, released [a blueprint for ](https://dd80b675424c132b90b3-e48385e382d2e5d17821a5e1d8e4c86b.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/external/09072023bipartisanaiframework.pdf)“real enforceable AI protections” that includes the creation of an independent oversight agency that AI companies would have to register with. It also proposes that AI companies should bear legal liability “when their models and systems breach privacy, violate civil rights, or otherwise cause cognizable harms.” Adding to the sense of urgency is widespread agreement among lawmakers that Congress acted too slowly when it came to regulating emerging new technologies, like social media platforms, in the past. “We don’t want to do what we did with social media,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting, “which is let the techies figure it out, and we’ll fix it later.” The slow pace of the debate in Washington has led several state lawmakers to take matters into their own hands. California state Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bill on Wednesday proposing that “frontier” AI systems that require above a certain quantity of computing power to train should be subject to transparency requirements. **_Read More:_** [**_Exclusive: California Bill Proposes Regulating AI at State Level_**](https://time.com/6313588/california-ai-regulation-bill/) As the state that is home to Silicon Valley, where most of the world’s top AI companies have their headquarters, Wiener says that California has a significant role to play in setting the guardrails for the industry. “In an ideal world we would have a strong federal AI regulatory scheme,” Wiener told TIME in an interview on Tuesday. “But California has a history of acting when the federal government is moving either too slowly or not acting.” Most Americans support the recent push for action. More than half of U.S. adults, including 57% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans, “agree that the development of AI technologies should be heavily regulated by the government,” according to a Morning Consult [poll in June](https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/ai-regulations-bipartisan-support). While lawmakers overwhelmingly agree on the need to regulate AI, a partisan split has also emerged, with some Republicans accusing lawmakers of using the issue to justify expanding federal regulation. “More than fearmongering and fanciful speculation are required by law,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, [said in a letter](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2023/9/sen-cruz-ai-has-opportunity-to-improve-lives-spur-economic-growth-and-create-new-jobs) to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan Monday demanding answers about her agency’s stance on AI regulation. He echoed some of his colleagues’ concerns about following in the steps of the “heavy-handed regulation” of the European Union. “To me, the biggest existential risk we face is ourselves,” Cruz wrote in the letter. “At this point, Congress understands so little about AI that it will do more harm than good… let’s pause before we regulate.” ## Transcript [00:06] The we had a diverse group of participants, [00:09] they talk to each other on varnish, [00:12] everyone learned from everybody else. [00:15] And so I am really pleased as I as some of the people who [00:19] came out said it was his star. [00:20] We got some consensus on some things. [00:24] First, I asked everyone in the room is does, [00:28] is government needed to play a role in regulating a and every [00:33] single person raised their hands even though they had diverse [00:38] views. So that gives us a message here that we have to try to [00:42] act as difficult as the process may be. [00:48] So that I can get the key point was really bad for us to [00:53] have a referee, referee a sports game supposed games and then [00:58] play games are better for us to take fairly. [01:04] I think it is important for the for similar reasons to have [01:09] a regulator regulator which you can think of, [01:11] is referring to ensure that companies, take actions that are [01:15] safe and in the interest we go public [01:25] I think so they are going wrong or just fear. [01:39] So we have to be proactive rather than reactive in the past [01:45] and I will lie for this am. [01:54] Text you send me samples of safety, [01:56] belt seat belts, we're opposed by the order in school for a long [02:00] time. Even though the date it was pretty clear that their stage [02:03] radically improved that Justin is working. [02:08] So [02:11] Are we we don't have in that situation. [02:12] We were fighting regulations even though the other things to [02:16] elevate the questions are questions is really one of civilizational [02:27] is. So it's just it's it's not like one group versus another [02:31] one group of humans Old humans everywhere. [02:36] Very fortunate to have that huge opportunities. [02:43] During cancer education and huge wrist. [02:48] And I think that was the big tension risk. [02:51] People are, come on, civilization size wrist, [02:54] maybe not so big in terms of percentage, [02:57] but very smart. [02:59] People have concerns about some very big risk. [03:03] So and then the other tension, I think in the room there is open [03:09] source. [03:11] This is open to everybody versus Amore clothes system and it's the [03:16] same issues. [03:18] With regard to risk and reward. [03:20] And then finally, one area of agreement American leadership. [03:24] Critical won't happen without American leadership. [03:27] You don't want China leading on this? [03:29] I think that I would say unanimous. [03:35] Regulations are on the table and I believe they are reality [03:40] in this field. [03:42] It's a brand-new field and I think need some guidance. [03:50] Well, I looked at the diversity of the people on the panel [03:52] and they represent all segments and they seem to be in general [03:57] agreement or moving forward together. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6313892/ai-congress-regulation-hearings/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6313892/ai-congress-regulation-hearings/"},"headline":"AI Regulation Takes Baby Steps on Capitol Hill","datePublished":"2023-09-14T10:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T07:26:36.853Z","description":"In Washington, it has become much easier to agree on “existential risks” than specific constraints.","url":"https://time.com/6313892/ai-congress-regulation-hearings/","keywords":["Congress"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt363b1568d08012c7/698a406186f68e60ca6f2c5e/congress-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vera Bergengruen","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/vera-bergengruen/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt363b1568d08012c7/698a406186f68e60ca6f2c5e/congress-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"AI Insight Forum","caption":"OpenAI CEO Sam Altman arrives for the \"AI Insight Forum\" outside the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building on Wednesday. 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