Discussion · Senate

Mark R. Warner Democrat

“I want the Senate to pass this bill right now. It creates safety rules and testing standards for artificial intelligence. We cannot trust AI companies to police themselves, and we cannot leave the rules up to individual states. If we do not make AI safe, the public will turn against it, and China will get ahead of us.”
Official Congressional Record

Madam President, in a moment, I am going to ask for a UC. I appreciate that the chairman of the Commerce Committee is here as it is in his jurisdiction, and he has been working on this issue. Congratulations on his legislative success last night. To address, kind of, a little bit of what Senator Kim just mentioned, we don’t know. What we do know is that the ChatGPT model that has already been released and is out in service has literally had thousands of times where it has gone beyond what the model was supposed to have done. I completely don’t think we can solve this State by State. Yesterday, Florida sued ChatGPT in kind of a very red State with a very Republican attorney general’s taking, you know, an almost the-sky-is-falling approach. We are trying to say--you know, I am pro-AI here, but if we lose this moment--I have never seen an innovation that could be so positive but be viewed so negatively by the public at this point, particularly by young people. So we are just saying: Let’s put a safety board in place. We have to recognize things where we don’t empower the existing incumbents, but I think we can do that. We are saying: Release testing. Make sure the sandboxes are safe on cyber protocols. Make sure there is a safety protocol that goes back even before testing, and make sure, after--God forbid--an incident, that there is an incident report. Again, I would echo what my colleagues have said. You know, I have not talked to a single Member on either side of the aisle who doesn’t think we need to move. I don’t think the option of simply relying on the good will of these companies will be enough. If we are not able to move forward today, I commit to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle because I think there is, frankly, no issue more important. If we don’t get safety rights and all of the things about workforce or agent liability or national security, which has to be dealt with, we may miss. That would be the worst. If Americans turn against this innovation and say: We are going to stop it across the board, nothing would be better for China, and we don’t want that to happen. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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