7 Takeaways from Today's Senate AI Hearing

Welcome to The AI Breakdown, the most interesting & important news and conversations in AI.

First, the News:

• OpenAI apparently kinda sorta agrees with that leaked Google memo, as The Information reports that they’re going to release an open source model

• Red Pajama creator Together raises $20m for open source AI development

• According to some job listings, Amazon is creating a ChatGPT-style interface for shopping

The 7 Key Takeaways from the Senate AI Hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law) held its first AI-related hearing of the ChatGPT era. The invited witnesses included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM Chief Privacy and Trust Officer Christina Montgomery, and Professor and AI safety voice Gary Marcus.

I watched the ~3 hour hearing, and here were my big takeaways:

1. Social media platforms are the politicians’ starting framework - They see everything through the lens of big tech and consumer social media, even when the comparison isn’t apt

2. Section 230 haunts them - This group of Senators feel like indemnity for platforms from the 1996 Communications Decency Act was a huge mistake that has hamstrung them (despite internet freedom advocates thinking it’s hugely important)

3. Huge range of AI knowledge in Senate - Some Senators are your oldest relative typing one finger at a time; others are asking about Constitutional AI

4. Misinformation, election tampering rank higher than jobs and x-risk for concerns - This is partially derived from takeaway #1 and partially due to the state of partisan discourse in D.C.

5. Serious momentum for a new AI regulatory agency - Surprisingly bipartisan interest in forming a new regulatory body to oversee AI - maybe as a way to feel like they’re doing something when they’re not sure what they should be doing?

6. NO ONE is skeptical of transformative power of AI - Remarkably, this conversation is starting from the shared assumption that AI is as big a deal as people are making it out to be.

7. There is no clear starting point for regulation - The sense that they need to do something is about as much consensus as there is so far.

There has also been a LOT of kerfuffle about Sam Altman arguing for AI licenses, with a pretty common take being some version of:

We’ll talk about that more soon, but in the meantime, if you want to hear more analysis of today’s hearing, watch today’s show:

Some Palette-Cleansing Text-to-Video

Today’s AI Breakdown Brief

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Signing off from the future’s past - NLW