Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are meeting in Washington to discuss future AI regulations

By Brian Fung | CNN

Washington — Some of the most influential voices in the tech industry are meeting with federal lawmakers Wednesday as the US Senate prepares to draw up legislation regulating the fast-moving artificial intelligence industry.

Among those attending the in-person event are the CEOs of Anthropic, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir and X, the company formerly known as Twitter. The guest list also includes Bill Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, along with leading officials from the entertainment industry, civil rights groups and labor organizations.

Today’s meeting and its expected all-star cast marks the first of nine sessions hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has pledged to craft comprehensive guardrails regulating the AI sector in what he’s described as an unprecedented congressional effort.

“With AI we can’t be like ostriches sticking our heads in the sand,” Schumer said, according to prepared remarks acquired by CNN. He also noted this is, “a conversation never before seen in Congress.”

The push reflects policymakers’ growing awareness of how artificial intelligence, and particularly the type of generative AI popularized by tools such as ChatGPT, could potentially disrupt business and everyday life in numerous ways — ranging from increasing commercial productivity to threatening jobs, national security and intellectual property.

The high-profile assemblage of guests trickled in shortly before 10 a.m., with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pausing to chat with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang outside the Senate Russell office building’s Kennedy Caucus Room. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was seen huddling with Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, while X owner Elon Musk quickly swept by a mass of cameras with a quick wave to the crowd. Inside, Musk was seated at the opposite end of the room from Zuckerberg, in what is likely the first time that the two men have shared a room since they began challenging each other to a cage fight months ago.

The session at the US Capitol in Washington could give the tech industry its most significant opportunity yet to influence how lawmakers design the rules that could govern AI. Some companies, including Google, IBM, Microsoft and OpenAI, have already offered their own in-depth proposals in white papers and blog posts that describe layers of oversight, testing and transparency — though some companies differ on key questions such as whether a new federal agency is needed to regulate AI.

But crucially, the event could also shed light on the political feasibility of a broad, sweeping AI law, setting expectations for what Congress may achieve.

“I think what these forums will do is give some insight into, you know, what is the range of opinion among members of Congress?” said Christopher Padilla, vice president of IBM’s global government affairs team. “Is there some consensus on some basic things, like transparency, or respecting intellectual property rules, or explainability of algorithms? Is there a common denominator someplace where enough members could agree? I think we’ll learn that through this process.”

At the meeting, Padilla added, IBM plans to highlight how some of the company’s clients are currently using its AI tools, as well as IBM’s proposed vision for AI policy, which calls for applying escalating restrictions to algorithms depending on the risks their use may cause. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna will also seek to “demystify” a widely held impression that AI development is done only by a handful of companies like OpenAI or Google, Padilla said.

Call for regulation

Executives such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman already wowed some senators by publicly calling for new rules early in the industry’s lifecycle, which some lawmakers see as a welcome contrast to the social media industry that has resisted regulation.

Clement Delangue, co-founder and CEO of the AI company Hugging Face, tweeted last month that Schumer’s guest list “might not be the most representative and inclusive,” but that he would “try my best to share insights from a broad range of community members, especially on topics of openness, transparency, inclusiveness and distribution of power.”

Civil society groups have voiced concerns about AI’s possible dangers, such as the risk that poorly trained algorithms may inadvertently discriminate against minorities, or that they could ingest the copyrighted works of writers and artists without compensation or permission. Some authors have sued OpenAI over those claims, while others have asked in an open letter to be paid by AI companies. News publishers such as CNN, The New York Times and Disney are some of the content producers who have blocked ChatGPT from using their content. (OpenAI has said exemptions such as fair use apply to its training of large language models.)

“We will push hard to make sure it’s a truly democratic process with full voice and transparency and accountability and balance,” said Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “and that we get to something that actually supports democracy; supports economic mobility; supports education; and innovates in all the best ways and ensures that this protects consumers and people at the front end — and just not try to fix it after they’ve been harmed.”

The concerns reflect what Wiley described as “a fundamental disagreement” with tech companies extending from how social media platforms have handled mis- and disinformation, hate speech and incitement.

“They’re complicated issues, but their way of how [the companies] understand and balance them, how they see cost centers in trust and safety rather than as really important investments …. we have real disagreements there,” Wiley said, adding that giving underrepresented groups a seat at the table will be crucial to a successful outcome. “While we share a lot of the same principles in many instances, I think the question is, how do we find the right balance that understands there are some legitimate issues on all sides of this conversation, but that without representation, without access … we are going to have larger societal problems.”

Developing policy