Ever since ChatGPT exploded in popularity last year, Silicon Valley’s titans have been embroiled in a race to be at the forefront of artificial intelligence. Yet in Washington, lawmakers have struggled to keep up with the technology, which they are only beginning to understand. On Wednesday, both sides collided in one of the tech industry’s most proactive shows of force in the nation’s capital. Elon Musk of Tesla, X and SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Jensen Huang of Nvidia are among a dozen or so tech leaders in Washington for the bipartisan A.I. Insight Forum, organized by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, along with labor union leaders and civil society groups. The closed-door meeting is the first in a series of crash-course lessons on A.I. for lawmakers. More than that, it is an opportunity for tech leaders who represent companies with a collective value of more than $6.5 trillion to influence A.I.’s direction as questions swirl about its transformative and risky effects. And it is a chance to be seen as relevant and leading on the technology. “Today, we begin an enormous and complex and vital undertaking: building a foundation for bipartisan A.I. policy that Congress can pass,” Mr. Schumer said in prepared opening remarks. As tech chiefs filed past dozens of television cameras and reporters shouting questions into the Senate’s office building, Mr. Altman, who has warned about A.I.’s risks, said he was “impressed” by Congress’s sense of urgency and focus on the technology. “I think they want to do the right thing,” he said.
Full story : Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg to Discuss AI with Lawmakers in Washington.
