Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Senate’s Inaugural AI Insight Forum
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the Senate’s upcoming AI Insight Forum on September 13th. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Next week, the Senate will host a gathering unlike any we have seen before here in Washington, when we kick off our inaugural AI Insight Forum on September 13th.
A gathering unlike any seen before, to debate a topic unlike any other. Our world is already changing in dramatic ways because of artificial intelligence, but we’re likely just at the start.
So to meet the challenge of this moment, our AI Insight Forums will convene some of America’s leading voices in AI, from different walks of life and many different viewpoints. Executives and civil rights leaders. Researchers, advocates, voices from labor and defense and business and the arts. I am proud to say next week’s AI Insight Forum – the first of a whole series we will host this fall – will be high-powered, diverse, but above all, balanced.
And that’s precisely what Congress needs right now. Our committees have already done great bipartisan work on this topic, and ultimately they will be the ones tasked with drafting legislation.
But these Insight Forums will supercharge the committee process by getting to the root of AI: where to start, what questions to ask, how to move forward. They will provide the nutrient agar to help committees do their work.
And let me stress something else: there is true bipartisan interest to work on AI here in the Senate. I want to thank my colleagues Senators Rounds, Young, and Heinrich for working with me to organize these forums, as well as all my colleagues from both sides who recognize we must move quickly on this issue.
Legislating on AI is certainly not going to be easy. In fact, it will be one of the most difficult things we’ve ever undertaken, but we cannot behave like ostriches sticking our heads in the sand when it comes to AI.
Both parties must work together and treat AI with the same level of seriousness as national security, job creation, our civil liberties. Because very soon, if not already, AI will impact all these issues and more.
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