Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Successful Senate Bipartisan AI Insight Forum On Elections And Democracy

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on yesterday’s bipartisan AI Insight Forum on elections and democracy. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Yesterday, the Senate held our fifth and sixth bipartisan AI Insight Forums. Both AI Insight Forums were a huge success. We learned a lot, we had a lot of good discussions, we all left with a better understanding of the ways AI is already reshaping our world.

Our Elections & Democracy AI Insight Forum was especially informative. It’s the area that requires the most immediate action, because the 2024 elections are fast approaching.

And we know there have already been--and have always been - bad actors trying to jaundice our elections, but we agreed in the hearing, in the forum, that AI will be a dramatic force multiplier for the spread of disinformation.

We also agreed that government can’t act alone to create guardrails to protect our elections in the age of AI. I was proud to see three major companies in the room during the AI Insight Forum – Meta, Microsoft, and Google – come out and say they supported legislation to create these guardrails.

We also agreed that we need to act quickly to secure our democracy in the age of AI, because time is of the essence ahead of next year’s elections. It may be the thing we have to do first when it comes to legislating and creating guardrails in AI.

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