Name: CEO Initiative 2023: The Policies And Opportunities of AI
Uploaded: 2023-10-04
Duration: 12 min 32 s
Description: Todd Young, U.S. Senator, Indiana Interviewer: Matt Heimer, Executive Editor, Features, FORTUNE

Todd Young, U.S. Senator, Indiana Interviewer: Matt Heimer, Executive Editor, Features, FORTUNE

CEO Initiative 2023: The Policies And Opportunities of AI

Conferences

I mean, welcome to the big screen uh fairly shortly. Uh Senator Todd Young of Indiana, uh We'll get him on there as soon as we can. Uh just want to remind you all that basically, uh we, this is still a dialogue uh even though the senator couldn't be with us in person. So uh if you have a question, raise your hand, raise a paddle, we'll get somebody to you with a microphone as soon as they can. And uh now he has joined us, please welcome to the screen. Uh Senator Todd Young, it is Senator. Thank you so much for being with us today. We're so lucky to have you. Um As you know, the CEO initiative is this gathering of business leaders and business decision makers. And I think at this point, almost a year after the introduction of chat GPT, uh everybody in this room has both an A I fantasy kind of their best case scenario and an A I nightmare of what could go wrong as we roll out this technology. So, Senator Young, what is your A I nightmare. Bye. Well, thank you, Matt. Uh Thanks for having me on it. It's great to visit with everyone. Sorry, I can't be in person, but I do have an A I nightmare and, and uh it, I'm sorry, I'm getting an echo. So I'll just work through that. It relates to uh the democratization of terror. Uh And, and uh you know, that would be the ability for non state actors uh or, or malign governments or, or just somebody in their basement somewhere in the world to cook up a biological weapon. So that's uh I volunteered to you, my, my biggest concern, I don't however want that to overshadow what I envisage as just incredible upside opportunity, economic, social, um uh health, uh and on and on and, and so what, what we're trying to do is mitigate these, these risks. And there's a handful of them that I think send shivers down our spines when we hear about them so that we can continue to innovate. And uh we can all realize that the upside benefits. So, in that mix on that spectrum between the upside and the, and the worst case, what are the right places for the federal government to put a thumb on the scale or to intervene? How much to do? How little, what's the, what's the, what's the sweet spot in your mind? Well, right now, I think it's important to emphasize we're in the process of educating ourselves through a series of A I insight forums that uh Senator Schumer and I Senator Mike rounds and, and Martin Heinrich have convened to educate ourselves uh visiting with the world's best minds on, on artificial intelligence and to educate the rest of our colleagues so that we're prepared to intelligently answer that question and others and, and to make sure we get this right with that said, um It's pretty clear to me that most of the, the fears um in the, in the upside uh opportunities. Uh We, we have won't require new laws uh to address the fears and to harness the opportunities. Instead, the challenge will be to adopt existing laws, existing prohibitions, existing rules of the road to an A I enabled world. Sometimes sometimes that will mean filling some gaps in our existing statute. But oftentimes, it will just be a task of the, of the executive branch to draft new rules or, or new regulations in a given area that in turn, as you might imagine, uh will require us to think very differently about our human resources uh all throughout government. So what's an example of a place where you can see that kind of uh that incremental approach, having a big effect and a big positive effect. Uh drug development. This is actually an agency of government that um based on visit with a number of constituents and others. The FDA is, is certainly not perfect, but they're doing a pretty good job of, of upskilling their workforce uh recruiting, uh who they need to recruit to be able to dialogue uh with innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers and um and, and, and sort of bring that agency into an A I enabled world artificial Intelligence is increasingly important to uh our pharmaceutical manufacturers and, and the rapid development of new treatments. And um so that's, that's one agency we can learn from another is Treasury Treasury. Uh Also, uh you know, has, has expertise with within that agency, they've had some measure of success in retaining that expertise over a period of time. So we can learn from these agencies. We're gonna need it in the USDA. We will need uh more expertise in dod really when you go run, run through the various regulatory agencies we have in government. Uh we, we're going to have to rethink uh staffing for the 21st century. So it sounds like you're looking at a I, not only as something external to government, the government is going to have to respond to but as sort of an enhancer, something that makes government itself more efficient, which is kind of an interesting take. It's, you know, so much of the, of the debate in Congress and we saw it this weekend with the near shutdown comes to, you know, is government wasteful, is government doing too much? This is, this sounds like a chance to let government do less with more. Am I hearing you right on that or more with less? I should say this won't just be an exercise in, in reinventing government, so to speak. Uh We are going to need people within government who can figure out how to apply. Let's take civil rights laws as an example. When someone applies for a credit mortgage application, uh they uh are under the firm belief that in this country, once race or ethnicity will not be uh a negative. Uh When they apply for that credit, that law is going to have to apply to the algorithms to the artificial intelligence algorithms that we are increasingly seeing coming online. How how can our regulators make sure that a new algorithm uh is compliant? Well, they will need people within the regulatory agencies who can interact with industry uh to discuss how to best regulate. Um and, and so that requires a level of expertise, not just in industry but uh within government. So that's, that's one narrow but very important example of how government is going to have to up its game, so to speak, uh to uh adapt to this new challenge. It sounds like that requires, oh, forgive me for interrupting, but it sounds like that requires a certain amount of uh requirement if you will of transparency from the private sector, from leaders like this, about how they're using A I. And there have been a lot of concerns about different A I models not being transparent enough. I know European Union is a little bit ahead of us and having passed some regulations. Around uh around this, you know, within that framework. Are you seeing any models that you feel like you and your colleagues in Congress could, could draw from, could learn from. Yeah, every, every country or in this case region will have to adopt its its own approaches. Um The feedback I I will often receive from members of the business community and, and uh others is that the European Union adopted a model, you know, that that was pretty predictable, pretty consistent with their regulatory and, and legal culture and the United States, I think will adopt likely a more risk based approach. So um less heavy handed in areas which are of, of uh perhaps uh you know, uh lesser societal concern. Uh and then uh in those areas uh that rise to a greater level of, of concern or, or uh impact, there may be less, there may be less um acceptance of air uh and therefore the legal structures will be greater. So that would be a risk based approach. And um I think that that will likely be our load star uh when we finally get down to drafting uh you know, legislation in Congress and, and uh regulating uh the industry so that our innovators can go out there and, and continue to innovate and lead the world in developing A I technologies. Speaking of the innovators, you mentioned the A I insight forum, you had the first one of those, just a few weeks ago here in DC, uh Elon Musk, is there Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman from open A I. Um What uh what if anything did you and your colleagues take away from those conversations that uh changed your thinking or added to your thinking in, in meaningful ways? Number one, everyone in attendance at that first A I insight uh forum thought that government had an important role to play uh that, that government should be uh coming up with a regulatory structure to provide some guidance to and certainty to uh our, our developers, uh our investors and uh researchers and so forth. Um The other point of emphasis was on this risk based approach. Uh You know, let's let's try and adopt this flexible model as we can uh to regulation. Uh which means to the extent we are uncertain about how to address a particular challenge right now. And perhaps it's transparency. Uh uh For example, um then, then, you know, there, there's still time, not everything has to be done uh uh Initially. Uh But I think it's, it's fair to say just about everyone in attendance with a couple of exceptions, really emphasize the importance of not unduly constraining our innovative potential in the United States. Uh so that we can continue to, to lead the world and ideally uh to embed within next generation Artificial Intelligence technologies, our own values, our own values around bias around transparency um and explain and, and related challenges privacy on the subject of our values, which is such a great point. Uh Your colleague, Mark Warner was here about an hour ago, speaking with my colleague, Alan Alan Murray and he made the point, you know, he basically said if, if the, if we do nothing else in the short run, we should be stepping in to protect essentially faith in our elections and faith in our faith in public elections and faith in public markets. Um I know bipartisanship can be elusive, but do you feel like that's an arena where you're all aligned? Do you think that's attainable in the, in the near future? I'm on board? We'll start with that. But I, I think most members as I speak to most members of the United States Senate, um they embrace the idea that uh there, there are some fairly obvious sort of rifle shot uh legislative initiatives that we're just going to have to tackle regardless of what sort of uh political dynamics might intervene as we head into the next year. Uh I think one of those is, is clearly elections um in terms of markets, uh that can mean a lot of things. So III I would be interested what precisely uh Mark has in mind there. But um we do seem to be gravitating around certain, you know, obvious things. Uh but I would start with elections. This is something that both Mark and, and um Amy Klobuchar have have showed a lot of leadership on. Well, it's great to hear at a time when bipartisanship can be elusive. It's great to hear about some areas where, where you are finding agreement. Um, Senator Young, I'm afraid we've, we've come to the end of our time, but we're so grateful to you for joining us on the feed and, and speaking to this group and, and we wish you luck in this really difficult job. Thanks so much for being with us.