WASHINGTON, May 23, 2023 – Experts on artificial intelligence disagree on whether licensing is the proper legislation for the technology. 

If adopted, licensing requirements would require companies to obtain a federal license prior to developing AI technology. Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified that Congress should consider a series of licensing and testing requirements for AI models above a threshold of capability. 

At a Public Knowledge event Monday, Aalok Mehta, head of US Public Policy at OpenAI, added licensing is a means to ensuring that AI developers put together safety practices. By establishing licensing rules, we are developing external validation tools that will improve consumer experience, he said. 

Generative AI — the model used by chatbots including OpenAI’s widely popular ChatGPT and Google’s Bard — is AI designed to produce content rather than simply processing information, which could have widespread effects on copyright disputes and disinformation, experts have said. Many industry experts have urged for more federal AI regulation, claiming that widespread AI applications could lead to broad societal risks including an uptick in online disinformation, technological displacement, algorithmic discrimination, and other harms. 

Some industry leaders, however, are concerned that calls for licensing are a way of shutting the door to competition and new startups by large companies like OpenAI and Google.  

B Cavello, director of emerging technologies at the Aspen Institute, said Monday that licensing requirements place burdens on competition, particularly small start-ups. 

Implementing licensing requirements can place a threshold that defines a set of players allowed to play in the AI space and a set that are not, said B. Licensing can make it more difficult for smaller players to gain traction in the competitive space, B said.  

Already the resources required to support these systems create a barrier that can be really tough to break through, B continued. While there should be mandates for greater testing and transparency, it can also present unique challenges we should seek to avoid, B said.  

Austin Carson, founder and president of SeedAI, said a licensing model would not get to the heart of the issue, which is to make sure AI developers are consciously testing and measuring their own models. 

The most important thing is to support the development of an ecosystem that revolves around assurance and testing, said Carson. Although no mechanisms currently exist for wide-scale testing, it will be critical to the support of this technology, he said. 

Base-level testing at this scale will require that all parties participate, Carson emphasized. We need all parties to feel a sense of accountability for the systems they host, he said. 

Christina Montgomery, AI ethics board chair at IBM, urged Congress to adopt precision regulation approach to AI that would govern AI in specific use cases, not regulating the technology itself in her testimony last week.  

WASHINGTON, May 23, 2023 — As historic federal investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy begin to take effect, House lawmakers on Tuesday clashed over the best response to shared concerns about competition with China and the instability of domestic electricity sector supply chains.

Tuesday’s hearing, convened by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, came just one day after the Department of Energy announced that it would no longer be awarding a $200 million grant to Texas-based battery company Microvast, following intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over the company’s ties to China.

Subcommittee Chair Morgan Griffith, R-Va., praised the decision but expressed continued skepticism about the department’s vetting processes — emphasizing the absence of Office of Manufacturing Director David Howell, who declined an invitation to testify.

By failing to appear at the hearing, “the Department of Energy not only refused to provide transparency to this committee, but they’re refusing to be transparent to the American people, who deserve every assurance that their tax dollars are not being funneled to China,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chair of the full Energy and Commerce Committee.

But Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., argued that the award reversal was proof that the department “is taking its stewardship of taxpayer money very seriously.”

Pallone also blamed the Republican majority for Howell’s absence, claiming that the hearing had originally been planned for June and that department officials were working to coordinate the schedule “when all of sudden the date changed earlier this month to today.”

The proposed Microvast award would have been part of a $2.8 billion investment in battery manufacturing funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, intended to accelerate and strengthen a domestic supply chain. The United States currently accounts for just 10 percent of global electric vehicle production and 7 percent of battery production capacity.

By contrast, China produces three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries and is home to the majority of production and processing capacity for several key battery components. China was responsible for half of the growth of the electric vehicle market in 2021, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

While the Biden administration has taken steps to bolster U.S. manufacturing through the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Republicans have broadly criticized this approach — particularly the IRA’s focus on clean energy.

Because of the current manufacturing imbalance, the administration’s emphasis on electric vehicles will largely benefit China rather than the U.S., argued Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment.

“Heavily subsidizing renewable energy and shoveling money in the form of financial awards out the door is not the solution,” McMorris Rodgers said. “These policies undermine our energy security and financially burden Americans already struggling with high cost of living — and would leave us even more reliant on China.”

However, a study commissioned by Third Way and Breakthrough Energy indicated that these pieces of legislation, alongside the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, are “fostering investments in and a reshoring of the clean energy supply chain and the associated manufacturing base,” said Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, senior resident fellow for the climate and energy program at Third Way.

Hughes-Cromwick urged lawmakers to allow time for supply chain restructuring, saying that policy stability over multiple years is crucial to allow companies to make sustainable adjustments.

In order to achieve domestic clean energy goals, Congress should first modernize permitting, said Jeremy Harrell, chief strategy officer at ClearPath.

“The single largest mover of private sector investment is regulatory certainty,” Harrell claimed. “Never has the phrase ‘time is money’ been more appropriate — developers can only build new energy infrastructure as fast as federal, state and local governments can permit them, and right now that’s not fast enough.”

Learn more about clean energy infrastructure and the U.S.-China tech race at Broadband Breakfast’s Made in America Summit on June 27.

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2023 – Congress should increase regulatory requirements for transparency in artificial intelligence while adopting the technology in federal agencies, said witnesses at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday. 

Many industry experts have urged for more federal AI regulation, claiming that widespread AI applications could lead to broad societal risks including an uptick in online disinformation, technological displacement, algorithmic discrimination, and other harms. 

The hearing addressed implementing AI in federal agencies. Congress is concerned about ensuring that the United States government is prepared to capitalize on the capabilities afforded by AI technology while also protecting the constitutional rights of citizens, said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan.   

The United States “is suffering from a lack of leadership and prioritization on these topics,” stated Lynne Parker, director of AI Tennessee Initiative at the University of Tennessee in her comments. 

In a separate hearing Tuesday, CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman said that is is “essential that powerful AI is developed with democratic values in mind which mean US leadership is critical.”

Applications of AI are immensely beneficial, said Altman. However, “we think that regular intervention by governments will be crucial to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.”

To do so, Altman suggested that the U.S. government consider a combination of licensing and testing requirements for the development and release of AI models above a certain threshold of capability.

Companies like OpenAI can partner with governments to ensure AI models adhere to a set of safety requirements, facilitate efficient processes, and examine opportunities for global coordination, he said.

Building accountability into AI systems

Siezing this moment to modernize the government’s systems will strengthen the country, said Daniel Ho, professor at Stanford Law School, encouraging Congress to lead by example to implement accountable AI practices.  

An accountable system ensures that agencies are responsible to report to the public and those that AI algorithms directly affect, added Richard Eppink of the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho Foundation. 

A serious risk to implementing AI is that it can conceal how the systems work, including the bad data that they could be trained on, said Eppink. This can prevent accountability to the public and puts citizen’s constitutional rights at risk, he said. 

To prevent this, the federal government should implement transparency requirements and governance standards that would include transparency during the implementation process, said Eppink. Citizens have the right to the same information that the government has so we can maintain accountability, he concluded.  

Parker suggested that Congress appoint a Chief AI Director at each agency that would help develop Ai strategies for each agency and establish an interagency Chief AI Council to govern the use of the technology in the Federal government. 

Getting technical talent into the workforce is the predicate to a range of issues we are facing today, agreed Ho, claiming that less than two percent of AI personnel is in government. He urged Congress to establish pathways and trajectories for technical agencies to attract AI talent to public service.   

Congress considers AI regulation

Congress’s attention has been captured by growing AI regulatory concerns.  

In April, Senator Check Schumer, D-N.Y., proposed a high-level AI policy framework focused on ensuring transparency and accountability by requiring companies to allow independent experts to review and test AI technologies and make results available publicly. 

Later in April, Representative Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., introduced a bill that would require the disclosure of AI-generated content in political ads. 

The Biden Administration announced on May 4 that it will invest $140 million in funding to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, which investment will bring the total number of Institutes to 25 across the country.