U.S. Rep. Don Beyer sees a vast potential for AI to transform society for the better — and also a slight chance it could doom us all.
The wide-ranging implications of ongoing advances in AI — and the recent efforts of a bipartisan AI task force of which Beyer (D-Va.) is a member — were the topic of a keynote presentation the congressman delivered Thursday.
Beyer, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in machine learning at George Mason University, shared highlights of over a dozen bills that he hopes to send to President Biden’s desk before Biden leaves office.
Beyer hopes bipartisan legislation endorsed by the task force can address a broad range of existing and potential issues concerning AI. His priorities include reining in AI’s biases, preventing the use of AI in creating sexually explicit deepfakes and child sexual abuse material, and placing guardrails on when AI can be used in military operations.
“This will be sort of unprecedented, for Congress to be this forward-looking,” Beyer said at a French-American Business Summit held at the French embassy in D.C.
At the same time, he noted limits on the kinds of legislation the task force is considering, especially when compared to the European Union’s AI Act. Beyer described “a pretty stark difference” between European and American approaches.
In contrast to the EU, which aimed to establish monitoring and oversight to match exponential advances in technology, he said the United States has adopted “a very light touch” to regulation and “none of the 14 bills that we will pass are specifically regulatory.”
“We want to try to move forward, but being very aware that we don’t want to depress or discourage the creativity, the imagination, the innovativeness in our American economy’s use of artificial intelligence,” the congressman said.
Zooming out, Beyer is optimistic that AI will turbocharge advances in an enormous range of fields. He hopes it will power “medical breakthroughs that will make most of us live to 100 years old and our children live to 120,” and enable advances in fusion technology to create “the most powerful tool ever to address climate change and to address poverty in the Global South.”
At the same time, the congressman acknowledged risks that AI might pose in coming years, including the toll that rapid technological advancement could take on working people around the world.
“I think it is very fair to think that artificial intelligence will create more jobs than it eliminates,” he said. “The challenge, of course, is the people whose jobs we’re eliminating do not necessarily have the skillsets, at that moment, to take on new jobs.”
He compared coming changes to the Industrial Revolution and Agricultural Revolution, but said they will likely take place much more quickly — requiring large-scale and nimble responses from governing authorities.
On an even more dramatic scale, Beyer noted concerns among a some researchers that a rogue, super-intelligent AI could threaten the existence of human society as a whole: a scenario that he likened to Skynet in the “Terminator” movies.
“We have to treat it as real and not pretend that it’s just going to go away, machines will never be this smart,” he said. “We know that we are building machines right now that can process billions of times more information than we could in our entire lifetime.”
He added, “I sometimes feel that my small role in the 24-person committee is making sure we don’t forget about the existential risks.”
No matter what legislation becomes law in the United States, Beyer noted that advances in AI technology are taking place internationally.
“We realize even if we get it perfect, which we won’t, that there are many, many other players all around that world that are really deeply investing in artificial intelligence — specifically China,” he said. “What we really need is the next generation of the Geneva Convention, specifically on artificial intelligence, that everyone in the world is buying into for our protection and for our benefit.”
Despite the risks, Beyer believes AI will usher in sweeping positive changes in coming years and decades.
“I don’t want to overstate it, but I think that artificial intelligence will be the greatest breakthrough in centuries and centuries, for the benefit of all of us,” he said.
