Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., is pulling out all the stops to get Congress to support regulating artificial intelligence (AI) technology, including by using an AI chatbot to write a resolution calling for those kinds of regulations.
On Jan. 26, Rep. Lieu introduced a nonbinding measure that would direct the House to look at AI regulation. The twist: according to the congressman, that measure was written entirely by the online AI chatbot ChatGPT.
The resulting resolution, Rep. Lieu said, is the first in the history of Congress to have been written by AI.
The California congressman said he began the effort with a simple prompt that stated: “You are Congressman Ted Lieu. Write a comprehensive congressional resolution generally expressing support for Congress to focus on AI.”
The resolution acknowledges that AI is rapidly advancing and has the potential to “greatly improve the lives of Americans and people around the world.” But it’s also the responsibility of Congress to ensure that AI is developed and deployed safely and ethically.
“Congress has a responsibility to ensure that the benefits of AI are widely distributed and that the risks are minimized,” the AI-written resolution states.
Before he released the AI-written resolution, Rep. Lieu authored an op-ed in the New York Times calling for similar actions from Congress to take action to regulate AI.
“We can harness and regulate AI to create a more utopian society or risk having an unchecked, unregulated AI push us toward a more dystopian future,” he wrote.
Rep. Lieu – one of a handful of members of Congress with a technology background – went on to explain that some of the harm associated with AI could even be “deadly.”
“The rapid advancements in AI technology have made it clear that the time to act is now to ensure that AI is used in ways that are safe, ethical, and beneficial for society,” Rep. Lieu wrote. “Failure to do so could lead to a future where the risks of AI far outweigh its benefits.”
In addition to Congress supporting regulating AI, Rep. Lieu is pushing for lawmakers to establish a nonpartisan commission that would provide recommendations about how to regulate AI.
Rep. Lieu’s AI-fueled resolution follows the release last week by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the first version of the agency’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Risk Management Framework (RMF), which was 18 months in the making.
The framework, said NIST Director Laurie Locascio, is intended for voluntary use, and provides a structured and measurable approach to understand and measure and manage AI risks.” The framework, she said, is “intended to be applied across a wide range of perspectives, a wide range of sectors and technology domains, and should be universally applicable to any AI technology.”
