Republicans in the House of Representatives expected to fight artificial intelligence regulations

During a closed-door meeting Thursday, House Republicans appeared resistant to supporting regulation of the artificial intelligence industry, a source familiar with the discussions told Spectrum News.

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House Republicans appeared reluctant during Thursday’s closed-door meeting to support regulation of the artificial intelligence industry, a source familiar with the discussions told Spectrum News

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., met Thursday with committee chairmen and GOP members of the House Artificial Intelligence Task Force

The source said that concerned about the potential for stifling innovation, the chairs of relevant committees expressed concerns about the need to currently regulate artificial intelligence

President Joe Biden, members of Congress and even AI industry executives have called for government regulation but also striking the right balance so as not to jeopardize innovation

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., met Thursday with committee chairmen and GOP members of the chamber’s artificial intelligence task force.

The source said that, concerned about the potential for innovation to be stifled, the chairs of relevant committees expressed concerns about the need to currently regulate artificial intelligence. It was clear that House Republicans would not support any legislation that created new agencies, established new licensing requirements, spent money on research and development, exposed developers to more litigation, favored one technology over another or created burdens for new developers, according to to the source.

GOP members in the House will side with innovators and oppose what they call Democrats’ push for government overreach in artificial intelligence, the source said.

“At the end of the day, we just want to make sure that the government doesn’t get in the way of the innovation that’s being done,” Scalise told Punchbowl News. “It allows America to dominate the technology industry, and we want to continue to dominate and maintain that advantage in the future.”

Conservative lawmakers also expressed concerns during the meeting about President Joe Biden’s executive actions on artificial intelligence last year and a report released last month by the bipartisan Senate working group on artificial intelligence.

In October, Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order that, in part, directs agencies to use their existing regulatory powers to impose new requirements on artificial intelligence companies in the absence of Congress sending regulations to Biden’s desk.

The Senate working group’s report outlined a roadmap for regulating artificial intelligence, as well as investing in technology to accelerate research and development. The four-member panel said the regulation could minimize AI-related risks such as bias, job displacement and invasion of privacy.

“Last year, Congress faced a momentous choice — either watch from the sidelines as artificial intelligence transforms our world, or launch an innovative, bipartisan effort to improve but also regulate this technology before it’s too late,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer , DN. Y., one of the members of the working group, said on the Senate floor last month. “Our AI Action Plan is the first, most comprehensive, most bipartisan, and most forward-looking report on AI regulation ever produced by Congress.”

Some are praising artificial intelligence as a revolutionary technology that could change many aspects of life – from searching the Internet to curing diseases. But some say it could also put people out of jobs, be used to promote disinformation, or get out of people’s control if systems are allowed to write and execute their own code.

Artificial intelligence has been around for years, but it exploded into the mainstream last year with the public release of chatbots, image generators and other tools.

Biden, members of Congress and even AI industry executives have called for government regulation, but also striking the right balance so as not to jeopardize innovation.

During a Senate hearing last year, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, told lawmakers that “regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to limit the risks associated with increasingly powerful models.” Altman added: “If this technology fails, it could go quite wrong.”

Altman and Microsoft CEO Brad Smith are among those who have said they support the creation of a new government regulatory agency.

Some in Washington have said they want to avoid repeating the mistakes the federal government made by moving too slowly to regulate social media.

“They (social media companies) have run away from regulation,” Sen. John Hickenlooper, R-Colo., said at a Punchbowl News event this week. “And once that horse comes out of the barn, obviously it’s very difficult to regulate corporations when they’ve become so big and powerful.”