[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 84 (Wednesday, May 15, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3691-S3692]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.


                                   AI

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, last year, Congress faced a momentous 
choice: either watch from the sidelines as artificial intelligence 
reshaped our world or make a novel, bipartisan effort to enhance, but 
also regulate, this technology before it was too late. So, as majority 
leader, I convened a bipartisan working group of Senators last year--
Senators Rounds, Heinrich, and Young--to chart the path forward on AI 
in the Senate.
  Today, after months of discussion, after hundreds of meetings, and 
after nine first-of-their-kind AI Insight Forums, our bipartisan Senate 
working group released the first ever roadmap for AI policy in the 
Senate. Our policy roadmap for AI is the first, most comprehensive, 
most bipartisan, and most forward-thinking report on AI regulation 
produced by Congress. Our roadmap lays out a panoply of policy 
priorities and guardrails that our group believes merit bipartisan 
consideration in this Congress and beyond.
  Three words govern what we do: urgency, humility, and bipartisanship. 
Urgency because AI is so complex, so rapidly evolving, and so broad in 
its impact--it covers almost every aspect of society. The longer we 
wait, the bigger the gap becomes. Just this week, ChatGPT released a 
new model that can read facial expressions and translate spoken 
language in realtime.
  Humility, this is hard to do because AI is nothing like Congress has 
ever dealt with before. It is rapidly changing. As we mentioned, every 
week, something new happens. It is all encompassing, and Congress has 
never really dealt with it before. In areas like health or defense, we 
have a long track record, lots of expertise, but not so in AI because 
it is so new.
  And, finally, bipartisanship, because the changes that AI brings 
won't discriminate between left, right, and center, and we all know the 
only way to get things done here is bipartisanship. That means 
compromise by Democrats and Republicans. But, certainly, getting 
nothing done is a worse alternative.
  As I have always said, innovation must be our North Star--innovation. 
America must take the lead in the world, continue to innovate, use the 
great nutrient agar of entrepreneurship

[[Page S3692]]

and doing new things and reaching out in new directions. We have been 
the most innovative country in the world. We should keep that.
  But innovation has two senses, two parts. Both are very important to 
realize. One I call transformational innovation, and one I call 
sustainable innovation.
  Transformational innovation is reaching the stars. It is the great 
stuff that AI could do. What if AI cures cancer? We have got to make 
sure we don't stand in the way of that happening.
  What if AI dealt with climate change in a really strong new way or 
fed the hungry of the world or gave each person on Earth a teacher? 
Senator Young mentioned this yesterday--a teacher that could just talk 
to them. These are great opportunities that we can't afford to miss.
  But we also need sustainable innovation. That means we need 
innovation to produce guardrails that minimize the damage that AI could 
bring. How do you deal with workers who might be displaced? We don't 
want to repeat the mistake of globalization, where globalization did a 
lot of good things--it took a billion people, probably, out of poverty 
in the world--but no one paid attention to those who were hurt by 
globalization. We have to pay attention to bias because many of these 
big systems have bias built into them, and we can't repeat that error.
  We have to deal with the creative community and intellectual 
property. So we need innovation in these areas as well to make sure 
that the liabilities of AI are dealt with.
  So we need both--transformational innovation and sustainable 
innovation--in a sense, to maximize the benefits of AI and minimize the 
liabilities.
  It is no easy task. It is no easy task. But our insight forums were 
designed to be balanced, with the input of leaders from the industry. 
They operate these AI complexes. We needed to hear from them, but also 
leaders from civil rights and labor and the creative community, sitting 
right next to them. And our AI forums were amazing.
  There were back-and-forths. People really didn't just make speeches 
but tried to come up with questions we needed to answer and solutions 
to those questions. It is a difficult job, but I believe we achieved 
that balance in our AI forums and certainly in the roadmap. Balance is 
important.
  Now, to help move forward on both forms of innovation--innovation, of 
course, being our North Star, transformational and sustainable 
innovation--we recommend a $32 billion surge in emergency funding to 
secure America's dominance in AI. And let me underscore: This is a 
bipartisan recommendation. Senators Heinrich and I, of course, care 
about it, but so do Senators Young and Rounds, and they were quite 
eloquent yesterday about how we needed to spend this money or the 
United States would fall way behind.
  Now, where do we go from here? Our policy roadmap is intended to be 
used by our committee chairs and ranking members as a foundation to 
move on good, bipartisan AI legislation. It is the committees that do 
the legislating. That is what has always happened around here. We need 
our committees to continue the bipartisan momentum of the AI gang to 
achieve the hope of passing legislation by the end of the year.
  We don't expect every piece of AI to be addressed, every problem that 
is in our roadmap to be addressed. Some will lend themselves to move 
more quickly than others, and we are not going to hold back on some 
that are ready because others are not yet ready. This is a very, as I 
said, difficult process that we have to approach with humility.

  Let me just say this: Our AI committee chairs and ranking members are 
ready and eager to engage in AI. Our roadmap includes many areas of 
bipartisan agreement that the committees can use, and, already, we are 
making progress in the Rules Committee, which is marking up legislation 
today. The Commerce Committee is looking at legislation regarding AI 
innovation. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is 
considering how to leverage AI in the Federal workforce. The Armed 
Services Committee is leading the way on AI in the military. And the 
list goes on. So our committees are getting actively involved, which is 
what we want.
  Our policy roadmap also embraces action to protect our elections from 
the potential risk of AI. First, the 2024 elections will be the first 
elections ever held in the age of AI. If we are not careful, AI could 
jaundice, even totally discredit, our entire system of elections as we 
know it. So, today, I am joining the Rules Committee, which is marking 
up three bills--all three with bipartisan support--to address AI's 
impact on our elections. I strongly support these bills, and I commend 
Senator Klobuchar and her sponsors for their bipartisan work.
  And that is just happening today, but we expect there will be other 
committees putting forth legislation in the near future.
  Our policy roadmap also advocates for a host of regulatory 
recommendations that help maximize AI's potential and minimize its 
risks--risks like bias and job displacement and privacy invasion. These 
are all difficult issues to deal with, but move forward we must.
  So our policy roadmap is an important step in AI regulation, and 
getting the committees here in the Congress to start figuring out the 
bipartisan legislation that they can move forward on is a good step. 
But I also plan to meet with Speaker Johnson in the near future to see 
how we can make Congress's effort on AI not just bipartisan but also 
bicameral.
  So today is immensely satisfying for our bipartisan AI gang. It has 
been a long, long time and a culmination of months of listening and 
thinking and working on this issue. So with great sincerity and 
humility, I want to thank my colleagues in the bipartisan working 
group--Rounds, Heinrich, and Young. I thank my Senate colleagues who 
attended our insight forums. Over 70 Senators attended at least 1 
forum, and many attended multiple forums. And they are beginning their 
work on AI through the committee process. And I thank all the staff who 
have put a lot of effort and a lot of hours into this policy roadmap. I 
have a great staff, and they have been so instrumental in getting us to 
the point we are at now.
  Congress can't and won't solve every challenge AI presents today, but 
with this policy roadmap, we now have a foundation necessary to propel 
America into the age of AI.