Senate Commerce Committee advances several bills on AI

Amid concerns about U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee on Wednesday advanced a bevy of AI-focused bipartisan bills, though some fault lines emerged that could signal growing tension between the parties on the issue. 

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who chairs the committee, opened the session by setting the global stakes for AI development, noting that in the U.S., the technology “may increase annual GDP growth by $1.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion per decade, or even more, but China and other countries are investing hundreds of billions of dollars and taking actions to gain economic and national security advantage from AI.” 

As the U.S. private sector “leads the way on this technology,” Cantwell added, “Congress should build good strong public-private partnership collaboration to drive innovation even further. As policymakers, we must make sure that emerging technologies work as intended and reliable in order to scale up this deployment.” 

The package of bills taken up by Cantwell’s committee included several endorsed by OpenAI (including the Future of AI Innovation Act, the CREATE AI Act, and the NSF AI Education Act) and others now backed by Google (including the VET AI Act and the TEST AI Act). Nine AI bills were ultimately advanced Wednesday.

During the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, broadly condemned several of the bills, arguing that the legislation would end up over-regulating the American AI industry. He accused companies of using “absurd exaggeration that would make Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov laugh” to push for legislation that would favor them, but would result in stifling innovation in the U.S. and enabling other countries — namely China — to take the lead on the technology. 

A Cruz amendment to eliminate President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence was voted down. 

“I would note that the Republican Party platform that was just adopted in Milwaukee explicitly calls for repealing or rescinding the Biden executive order designed to shackle the development of AI,” Cruz said. “And so I would urge the adoption of the amendment that rescinds that executive order.”

Several AI bills, some with amendments, were passed out of committee. Those bills include the CREATE AI bill, which would formally establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR); the NSF AI Education Act; the Small Business Artificial Intelligence Training and Toolkit Act; and the Artificial Intelligence Public Awareness and Education Campaign Act. 

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., retracted his legislation focused on studying the energy consumption of AI systems. The bill, which counted Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Don Beyer, D-Va., as co-sponsors, didn’t have enough support, Markey said.

Also on Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced a bill from Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., that would establish guardrails for federal AI acquisitions. The Promoting Responsible Evaluation and Procurement to Advance Readiness for Enterprise-wide Deployment (PREPARED) for AI Act passed the committee by an 8-3 vote.