This view breaks the statement into its steps and names what each one does.
Madam President, Claims · 25 wordsI think most of us in this Chamber realize that we are literally living through one of the most consequential technology moments in our lifetime, Procedure · 32 wordsand that is why I am here with several of my colleagues--Senator Schatz from Hawaii and Senator Kim from New Jersey--to say that we can’t, frankly, have regular business at this moment.Procedure Anecdote · 44 wordsYou know, before I got into politics, I was in the technology field. I was lucky enough to be on the ground floor of the wireless industry and then became a venture capitalist and was involved in iterations around the internet and cloud computing.Anecdote Claims · 207 wordsI can say without reservation that as big as wireless was, as big as the internet is, as big as cloud computing is, they will pale in comparison to the innovation that will come about through artificial intelligence.Unearned certainty In many ways, the reason I chose to ask the people of Virginia to hire me one last time was because, having spent an enormous amount of time on this subject, I am enormously concerned that we get AI right, that it is safe and it is fair, that America leads in AI innovation. Over the last year and a half or so, 2 years, I have spoken on this subject repeatedly. I have laid out my ideas on how we ought to have a comprehensive approach--legislation on data centers that would actually, if they don’t meet minimum Federal standards, would impose their inability to get a bonus tax depreciation. I have plans in terms of how we ought to be dealing with child safety. If you think social media messed up your kids, wait until your teenage daughter or son thinks they have an affinity or a relationship with a chatbot. How ironic that China has already prohibited that. We are seeing increasingly the use of AI agents. Positioning · 5 wordsWell, who bears the liability?Positioning Claims · 300 wordsI have some ideas there. National security. When Mythos came out from Anthropic, our head of NSA and Cyber Command said that this tool will change warfare as much as drones.1 Finally, I continue to be enormously concerned that while AI may create jobs long term, in the short run, in the next 2 to 5 years, I think we will have an enormous disruption in our workforce. I will make a wager with anyone that I hope I will lose that we could see up to 30 percent of recent college grad unemployment as companies try to integrate the productivity gains from AI, and they are simply not going to hire as many folks going forward. So I remain an AI optimist. I am not an AI doomer. But we are at a moment in time, looking over the last few weeks, where I think the whole world has recognized that we have to do something.Unearned certainty When AI companies, one after another, come out and say ``We have to elevate safety and put that first and foremost,’’ when OpenAI just yesterday said they are slowing the model on Astra, when Anthropic has said they are trying to build in more safety protocols--I think that is good, but are we really going to trust the industry to self-police on something that, if it goes beyond what is happening--and we have already seen not tens but literally thousands of examples where these models go beyond what humans want them to do, the most famous being the OpenAI Hugging example, 2where 3,000 bots jumped the sandbox fence, attacked another company, 3and then came back and attacked OpenAI. Literally, during that period, they communicated with each other, hid their intent from human beings, would sacrifice some of the bots for the greater cause, Positioning · 5 wordsand we are doing nothing?Positioning Claims · 10 wordsThat was July.4 In August, they had 10,000 bots collaborate.5 Aside · 63 wordsSo we three--and there are a lot of Senators on both sides of the aisle who I think are enormously concerned who said that we will all have time to debate all of our--I don’t want to use the term my friend from Hawaii will use, but pet rocks--I hope he will use it again--and say that we all have great ideas here, AsideThe ask · 15 wordsbut we should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now. Claims · 66 wordsAs we leave, if the Congress goes out and, God forbid, we have an incident--AI is already suspect by most Americans--we could actually see the stop of innovation if an AI tool took over a hospital or a water system. I am not an AI doomer, but the ability to have these AI agents take over and shut down part of the financial system is real. Reasoning · 8 wordsWe should heed the call from the experts. Claims · 46 wordsI think you will also see shortly--the finance world has said we need mandatory controls. I think you will see other large businesses say so as well. We need to make sure whatever safety board we put in place doesn’t ensconce the already largest frontier labs. Procedure · 13 wordsOur request is really simple. It has been as pared down as possible.Procedure The ask · 39 wordsBefore these models are released, they should be pretested to make sure, secondly, that the sandboxes where they do the testing have appropriate cyber protocols, that even before you start testing, there is at least a basic safety policy. Claims · 5 wordsAnd these companies welcome this. The ask · 15 wordsAnd God forbid we have an incident, we have to have an incident reporting mechanism. Procedure · 4 wordsNo more, no less.Procedure Claims · 93 wordsWe would house this at NIST. The safety board would have to include, obviously, where the expertise is--the frontier models. I actually think it would be good to have an international validator--somebody like the British--on it as well. They have an AI safety institute.6 We could actually guarantee to the rest of the world that our models are safe. So let’s not get involved--this is not a partisan issue. I think the chairman of the Commerce Committee is coming down. We have worked with him. We look forward to working with him further. Reasoning · 29 wordsBut let’s go ahead and put a statement in place that we in the U.S. Senate recognize the enormous upside of much AI, but there is also a downside. Procedure · 16 wordsWith that, Madam President, I would like to yield to my colleague, the Senator from Hawaii.Procedure
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