Musk Discusses Artificial Intelligence With Schumer on Capitol Hill

Elon Musk speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington, on March 9, 2020. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Capitol Hill on April 26, and the two talked about artificial intelligence (AI) and electric vehicles.

“We talked about the future,” Musk told reporters after finishing his meeting, which lasted about an hour. “We talked about AI and the economy.”

Schumer told reporters that the two “had a very good meeting.” The New York congressman added, “We talked about Buffalo, Tesla has a large plant in Buffalo. And we talked about AI.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in Washington on Dec. 22, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Schumer 

On April 13, Schumer announced a plan to establish rules for AI to address national security and education concerns, considering the rising popularity of programs like ChatGPT.

His proposal would require companies to allow independent experts to review and test AI technologies prior to their public release or update and gives users access to those results.

“I’ve worked with some of the leading AI practitioners and thought leaders to create a framework that outlines a new regulatory regime that would prevent potentially catastrophic damage to our country while simultaneously making sure the U.S. advances and leads in this transformative technology,” Schumer said in a statement at the time.

Schumer’s office cited China’s release of draft rules on regulating AI days earlier, calling it “a wake-up call to the nation.”

“Leader Schumer believes that it is imperative for the United States to lead and shape the rules governing such a transformative technology and not permit China to lead on innovation or write the rules of the road,” his office said.

China’s draft rules, announced by the Cyberspace Administration of China on April 11, stated that content “generated by generative artificial intelligence should embody core socialist values” and shall not contain anything that “subverts the state power” or “advocates the overthrow of the socialist system.”

Musk

When Schumer posted his proposed plan on Twitter, which he called a “first-of-its-kind” effort on AI, Musk applauded the senator’s announcement.

“Good news! AI regulation will be far more important than it may seem today,” Musk wrote.

Musk has been raising the alarm about risks associated with AI. In March, he joined over 1,000 experts in signing an open letter calling on all AI labs to “immediately pause” developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4.

“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” the letter says. “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

Last week, in an interview with Fox, Musk warned that AI has the potential to destroy civilizations. He explained that existing AI technologies are trained to be politically correct, and announced he will launch an AI platform called Truth GPT, a Chat GPT alternative that behaves as a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”

“I think this might be the best path to safety, in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe,” Musk told Fox News.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Jan. 30, 2020. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Warner

On Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) sent CEOs of several AI companies a letter, asking them to take steps to address the risks of AI.

“[W]ith the increasing use of AI across large swaths of our economy, and the possibility for large language models to be steadily integrated into a range of existing systems, from healthcare to finance sectors, I see an urgent need to underscore the importance of putting security at the forefront of your work,” the letter says.

Warner wants the CEOs to respond to 16 questions before May 26, on how each company was taking steps to prevent security breaches, malicious use, and misinformation.

Also on Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the Biden administration is working “as aggressively as possible to figure out our approach” to AI, according to Reuters.

“The challenge is you don’t want to stifle innovation in a brand new area with massive potential,” Raimondo said. “The risks related to misinformation and deep fakes etcetera are massive.”

Separately, also on Wednesday, Musk met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is in the United States for a six-day state visit. According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, Yoon invited Musk to invest in South Korea.

In response to the invitation, Musk said he is expected to visit South Korea and the nation is a leading candidate to host a Tesla gigafactory, according to Yonhap.