Artificial Intelligence

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on the AI briefing, yesterday, the Senate held its first-ever--its first-ever--classified briefing on the national security implications of artificial intelligence. It was an eye-opening presentation. Many of us spent a lot of time educating ourselves on AI, talking to experts, and holding hearings, but yesterday's briefing was a candid wake-up call on how truly complicated AI is and how much work, hard work, we have before us.

This will be an ongoing effort. We want to move quickly but not too quickly. We need to move quickly so bad countries--authoritarian countries and bad actors, not countries themselves--don't get ahead of us, but we can't move too quickly because we have to get this right, and it is very complicated. Action on AI will not be a matter of weeks, nor of years but, rather, of months.

I want to thank my colleagues who attended yesterday's briefing. We had a terrific turnout of roughly 70 Members--even better than the first.

I want to thank the briefers by name: Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director of the White House Office of Science and Tech; Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence; Kath Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense; VADM Trey Whitworth, Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; and Dr. Craig Martell, Chief Digital and AI Officer at DOD. Each briefer was clear, concise, and informative.

I was gratified my Republican colleagues came out of the briefing and said: Yes, this was a real back-and-forth, not just people reading a piece of paper and not just people answering questions.

For sure, we are not done. Very soon, I will announce the timing for our third all-Senate briefing and again urge my colleagues to attend, especially those who couldn't make the first two briefings. Learning as much as we can about AI as quickly as possible is essential.

AI is unlike anything Congress has dealt with before. It moves and changes so quickly. It is going to affect our world so dramatically. It is so much deeper in its complexity and lies so far outside our expertise. Coming up with legislative solutions will be one of the most difficult things Congress has ever, ever faced, so these briefings are an important initial step.

I don't kid myself on how difficult this is going to be. Some people asked why did I decide to take this on. Well, just because an issue is difficult or unfamiliar to Congress is no excuse to turn away, especially when it is so important and is going to have such a huge effect on every American and every person in the world's life. We can't throw our hands in the air and hope someone else figures it out.

Of the many things yesterday's briefing made clear, one of them was that government must play a role in making sure AI works for society's benefit. The private sector has made stunning progress innovating on AI, and Congress needs to be careful not to curb or hinder that innovation. But we are going to need guardrails, and the only agent that can do that is government.

Yes, some companies may put guardrails on on their own, but when another company refuses to put on those guardrails, that company, the original company, will feel the pressure--political or, more importantly, economic--and say: Look, we can't have those guardrails either. Even if many developers have good intentions, there are always going to be rogue actors, unscrupulous companies, and foreign adversaries that seek to harm us and discard any guardrails at all. We can't expect companies to adopt guardrails, as I said, if their competitors won't be forced to do so as well.

So it is only a task that government can do with help and input from the experts. That was made clear at the hearings yesterday. Even those AI companies that are way out front on this now admit that they need some government action, we need some kinds of guardrails.

Later this year, Congress will host the first-ever AI Insight Forums to bring the best developers, experts, and legislators in one room to identify the areas where we can take action and to make sure we are asking the right questions to begin with. Ensuring our national security and safety will be one of the most important issues we discuss.

I want to thank everyone who attended yesterday. It was bipartisan, and we must keep this issue bipartisan. How to deal with AI is not a Republican issue; it is not a Democratic issue; it is a national issue.

I really want to thank our little group of Senators--Heinrich, Rounds, and Young--for helping organize these briefings. I look forward to the third briefing soon.

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