- Sen. Chuck Schumer is hosting sessions to help lawmakers understand and shape future rules on AI.
- Axios reported that the first will take place in September.
Lawmakers in Washington are deciding who they should defer to on all things AI as they race against the clock to create rules to govern the consequential technology — and the list so far is mostly rich men.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is hosting a series of closed-door sessions, which he's calling AI insights forums, to learn more about AI as lawmakers figure out what to regulate. The first, per Axios, is set to take place on Capital Hill September 13.
Schumer's list of invitees skews rich and male. It includes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg.
Per a full list shard by Axios reporter Maria Curi on X, just seven of the 22 invitees are women.
Only three of the 22 could be described as specialists in AI or technology ethics — Humane Intelligence's Rumman Chowdhury, Mozilla fellow Deborah Raji, and the Center of Humane Technology's Tristan Harris. The majority are billionaire tech CEOs and founders, with the rest a smattering of industry and civil rights representatives.
Full list for Schumer's AI insight forum: pic.twitter.com/b9mJhW39NW
— Maria Cristina Curi (@m_ccuri) August 30, 2023
Most of the tech CEOs on the list have a fundamentally pro-AI impetus, though their approaches and philosophies may differ.
OpenAI has released GPT-4, Google is working on its upcoming Gemini model, while Meta has released iterations of its LlaMa model. Nvidia is providing much of the underlying hardware through its A100 and H100 GPUs. Others who benefit financially from AI adoption, directly or indirectly, include Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark, and Hugging Face CEO Clement Delangue.
The list has caused some outcry.
Meredith Whittaker, president of messaging app Signal and former director of AI think tank the AI Now Institute, posted on X: "This is the room you pull together when your staffers want pictures with tech industry AI celebrities. It's not the room you'd assemble when you want to better understand what AI is, how (and for whom) it functions, and what to do about it."
This is the room you pull together when your staffers want pictures with tech industry AI celebrities. It's not the room you'd assemble when you want to better understand what AI is, how (and for whom) it functions, and what to do about it. https://t.co/UM1EhFNb1H
— Meredith Whittaker (@mer__edith) August 30, 2023
Hugging Face's Delangue acknowledged on X that "unfortunately, it might not be the most representative and inclusive list."
"I will try my best to share insights from a broad range of community members, especially on topics of openness, transparency, inclusiveness and distribution of power," he wrote.