Transcript: The Futurist: The Rise of AI – The Washington Post

MS. BAIRD: Hello, and welcome. Im Kathy Baird, the chief communications officer here at The Post and the general manager of Washington Post Live. It is so great to have all of you here with us today.

Over the course of the past year, we've all heard plenty of both the hype and the fear around the explosive growth of generative artificial intelligence. It's playing an increasingly critical and exciting role in scientific research, the healthcare industry, sustainability, and education. But content generated by AI is also being used in campaign attack ads to create dangerous deep fakes and to spread misinformation.

Today, you will hear from leaders in Congress, the White House, and Silicon Valley, who will speak to the rise of AI, its promises and its perils, and how this moment is shaping our future.

First, my colleague Cat Zakrzewski will sit down with Democratic Congressman Don Beyer and Republican Congressman Marcus Molinaro to discuss their bipartisan efforts to regulate AI.

Then David Ignatius will be joined by Annie Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies at the White House, to discuss the impact of advances in AI on national security.

And next, Page Winfield Cunningham will be joined by Neal Khosla, CEO and co-founder of Curai, a telehealth company using AI to improve access to affordable health care.

Before we get started, I'd like to thank today's sponsor for this event, TechNet. Thank you all again for coming. My colleague Cat Zakrzewski will take the stage after this short video.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, good morning and welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm Cat Zakrzewski, national tech policy reporter here at The Washington Post. And we have two wonderful guests today. I'm joined by Congressman Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, and Congressman Marcus Molinaro, a Republican from New York. Congressmen, thank you so much for being here with us today.

REP. MOLINARO: We're glad to be with you. And I just want to extend my thanks to Don, and certainly all of you. This is a great platform. We appreciate the conversation.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, thank you.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to dive right in, Congressman Beyer.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And ask you a little bit about your work as vice chair of the AI Caucus in Congress. We've seen a number of proposals introduced by you and your colleagues on AI, but we haven't yet seen any of those proposals become law. When are we going to see some movement?

REP. BEYER: Well, I hope right away. You know, the AI Caucus was primarily put together to educate the members of Congress and their staffs on what AI is and how it's developing. We had some really interesting speakers, you know, the Sam Altmans and the Jack Clarks and others.

But Kevin McCarthy, when he was still speaker, put together an informal working group, including Marcus and myself, to try to actually bring bills to the floor to pass bills this year. And then, you know, it happened and Kevin's no longer--

REP. MOLINARO: What are you talking about, Don?

REP. BEYER: And so things have slowed down a little bit. And the new speaker, Mike Johnson, it's--I believe it's his intention to stand up this bipartisan working group to make things happen. He's been a little distracted recently, but we're hoping that it will happen this month.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And Congressman Molinaro, do you have any perspective on how Speaker Johnson is thinking about this and what direction he might go in with that working group?

REP. MOLINARO: Yeah, I think the speaker accepts both the need to get the working group up and functional, to move legislation, and also understands about the potential benefit and risks of AI and establishing the basic framework.

But to Don's point, and to everything we all know, it has been a year of unnecessary and unlimited distractions. And, you know, I wish that we were a bit more, you know, advanced on some of these policies. We have digital currency legislation that's waiting for floor time. And like all things, you know, Im new to Congress, but I certainly have watched the federal government function. And I know that my colleague knows this. You know, too often we are too far behind. This last year has really caused us to be even further behind.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And Congressman Beyer, on that point, we saw about a year ago the Senate set up its own working group. They've been having their forums hosted by Senator Schumer with some of the CEOs you just mentioned, as well as Elon Musk and others. Does the House risk falling behind the Senate right now?

REP. BEYER: I don't think we've ever been behind the Senate. Although I think in general, in Congress, Senate and House, we risk falling way behind the American people. Typically, we're always trying to catch up with where the people are. And you know, we don't have the 60-vote limit, which helps us in the House. But even better on AI, this has been remarkably bipartisan so far. Lots and lots of great discussions. I think we all want to avoid what we didn't do on social media, which is basically nothing over the last 24 years, other than make sure they can't be sued. That's all. So, yeah.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I mean, I guess, Congressman, I wanted to ask you just given we know that Senator Schumer is working on a framework on AI--he says that's coming soon--do you see common ground right now between House Republicans and Senate Democrats when it comes to AI policy?

REP. MOLINARO: Well, I'm very careful not to assume I know what any or most of my Republican or Senate Democratic colleagues are thinking at any given moment, because that is likely to change at any given moment. But no, I think there is.

I mean, listen, I'll use the digital currency conversation, and to Don's point, social media. I think--I think we recognize in a bipartisan, bicameral way we were slow to and didn't obviously create the framework or guidelines in the social media space, both to respect intellectual property, personal freedoms, but also the protection of identities and children. We relate to all of that. I think we acknowledge and know that we have to be working much more collaboratively, which is why, again, I do think we're going to be moving digital currency guidelines soon. And then our work, I think, will advance pretty rapidly. And there's room for both common ground and agreement.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you both have brought up social media. You've both brought up common ground. I've been covering tech policy for more than five years, and I've heard a lot about how there's bipartisan agreement on kids' safety, on privacy, a lot of these issues. Why is AI any different?

REP. BEYER: I think because of all the things--all these things are important, right? But the AI I think has the possibility to change our lives in untold ways, ways we can't even imagine. We're seeing every week the advances in healthcare, the diagnoses of different kinds of cancer, the development of new medicines. We're all going to live to be 120 because of this.

But there are also downsides. I think somebody very well said the other day it makes good things much better and bad things much worse. And so our job is not to suppress the extraordinary advantages that are going to come from AI but to make sure we address the known downsides as best we can.

REP. MOLINARO: And can I try to explain this? Actually, I'll say this to my 14-year-old son. Social media is the extension of our humanness--right?--good and bad. AI is artificial humaneness. It is very much rapid; it moves faster than we do. And the potential and risk is much--is much greater, certainly, than the social media platform space. But it is an extension of us. And frankly, I got into this space because of the potential that it provides in the intellectual and developmental disability space, neuro divergence, and being able to help individuals who struggled to kind of connect with the world, use the technology to more adequately and more ably to do that.

And so I think we acknowledge the broad scope, the broad potential, whether it's healthcare or national defense, but also the risk--the risk to harm humans, the risk of harm people, and the risk to harm institutions.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that topic of risks, Congressman Beyer, what are you most worried about when it comes to AI? What keeps you up at night?

REP. BEYER: Well, the short term and the most obvious thing is what it does to creative destruction of jobs. We know there's been a lot of displacement. Sometimes you hear numbers in the 20 percent of all jobs in the world. Although that's also been true in the agricultural revolution, the technology revolution, we will adapt, but it will be a painful adaptation.

The more--the more concerning things, I think, are about election security, about privacy. I don't much worry about the existential risks, although I think it's always important that we pay attention to that, because some very smart people are worried about the end of humanity.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And Congressman, how about you?

REP. MOLINARO: Well, other than the end of humanity.

REP. BEYER: We can agree on that.

REP. MOLINARO: Yeah, we do. Although when very smart people start worrying about things, we should probably start thinking about worrying about those things, I worry about election integrity, certainly. And to Don's point, obviously, the erosion and the impact on jobs. But just I think that for me the base concern is intellectual property and human identity in this concept that all of that is at risk. And we really need to create the framework and the guidelines to protect ourselves from ourselves.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And, Congressman, I want to come back to that topic of election security. But I also wanted to ask you, we just were talking about the lessons to be learned from social media. Congressman Beyer, you've been working on legislation that would expand cloud computing resources. Are we at a point right now in the AI revolution where we risk just seeing the big tech companies get even bigger?

REP. BEYER: Well, that is a danger. In fact, one of the legislation that Marc and I have done together is the CREATE AI Act. Its been very bipartisan. And it's the whole notion of most--even most companies and certainly universities can't afford to set up the 100 billion--million-dollar resource platform. So, what we want to do is create our own huge database, like OpenAI, for example, scrub the internet of 6 trillion different words, a significant percentage of which were not correct words or correct ideas. But if we can do the CREATE AI Act, we could then give universities, companies, small companies the democratization of AI by giving them a database resource to use for all these searches.

REP. MOLINARO: Listen, without question, again, going back to the social media space, what's the last major piece of legislation we've worked on but to protect children? If you think about it, the CREATE AI Act that Don mentioned provides that sort of broad foundation, if you will, to protect ourselves in that--in that sense. And my concern, ultimately is, is that we will be well too late and that lives will be horribly impacted because we didn't establish those guidelines.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that point of the idea of big tech getting bigger, we know that the FTC has been studying the relationships between some of the AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and the bigger tech players. Congressman Molinaro, do you support the FTC or DOJ opening an investigation into Microsoft and OpenAI?

REP. MOLINARO: Well, here's what I think, and it's part of what we're trying to accomplish. So, you know, you have the president's executive order which sort of stands up this sort of broad oversight to a degree, but we've got to legislate. And I do worry at times that the FTC kind of functions without legislative guiderails.

That said, at the moment, that's the tool, and the tool needs to be used effectively. So, I don't want to start getting ahead of an investigation so to speak. But I do think that the threat of and the consideration of using the FTC to at least, you know, hold somebody to account is necessary. But where we're absent is broad congressional action, that there needs to be the legislative function that then those agencies can work within.

And again, using digital assets as a parallel, that's where--that's the risk we have there. We don't have federal standards. The EU does. Great Britain does. We don't. And once we do--not by executive order, but by legislative action--then those regulatory agencies have the function and the capacity to appropriately provide the oversight--and by the way, accountability.

REP. BEYER: Thats a really interesting piece, though, too, because one of the big questions that keeps coming up again, is do we regulate the underlying math and the computer science, or do we regulate the use?

REP. BEYER: And I think we both come down heavily on the end use rather than trying to tell people you can't think. But then the question is, if youre regulating end use, who's doing the regulation. And so far, I think the debate has tended to be with the FTC and DOJ and others, we have the resources right now, the FCC, to do the regulation at the end use case, rather than setting up a big new federal bureaucracy to do it, which we're not excited about.

REP. MOLINARO: No, and I think using the existing tools is necessary. But again, using the crypto and digital space as the parallel, that's the issue. I serve on the Ag Subcommittee on Digital Assets. Yes, the Agriculture Committee has its Subcommittee on Digital Assets. Why? Because when treated in part as a commodity. Well, is it a commodity, or isn't it? And so we have the same sort of issue here. And that's why legislative action, I think, is necessary.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And, Congressman, you just mentioned the EU. They've obviously reached a deal on the EU AI Act. The UK has established their AI Safety Summit. The head of that summit--the head of their AI Safety Institute is actually in town this week. I'm just curious, does the U.S. risk falling behind these other countries and letting them take the lead when it comes to setting international AI standards?

REP. BEYER: I think we're way ahead of Britain. You know, their Bletchley Declaration is just a declaration. The president's executive order goes far beyond that. And NIST has established, we think, the best international standard of what AI should be. And the EU, I think we're trying to learn from that, and especially learn from their mistakes, because at least businesses pushed back really hard on it being overly prescriptive, lots of licensing, lots of looking at the underlying computer science, and we're trying to stay away from that.

REP. MOLINARO: Yeah, I think that is important. I would say that, I mean, first, let's be honest, we are all behind. I mean, it doesn't matter which nation or organization of nations, we are behind. But that's not awful. I do think the standards that NIST has set up and the president's executive order is broad and necessary. But I'll also take this as an opportunity to also state the obvious. It's kind of okay sometimes for someone else to take the first couple of steps. We can learn from both their success and their missteps as well. But I do think that--and listen, I'm new to this space, Don and others have been really engaged--I think we have attempted, I think earnestly, to keep pace. We just haven't yet established, in my view, broad enough I'll say guiderails for both protection, Americans protection, and Congress's base oversight.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to make--

REP. MOLINARO: If I said that correctly.

REP. BEYER: Yeah, you said it beautifully. One of the dangers there was, NIST, whom we lift up, apparently has two and a half whole staffers on this. So, we think there might--there's a lot more--

REP. MOLINARO: Theyre smart, though.

REP. BEYER: They are. They might need a little more resources, especially with the challenge we've given them.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: The UK has put over $100 million into its safety initiative. How much money does NIST need?

REP. BEYER: Not for me to say but--

REP. MOLINARO: And whatever he says, I say a few bucks less.

REP. BEYER: Right, yeah. Especially--more than two and a half people. Lets just say that.

REP. MOLINARO: We can negotiate to five, maybe six.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to make sure that we get to the topic of election security, because we've already seen issues with AI-generated robo calls, impersonating candidates in the race. We've seen political candidates using chat bots already. Is it already too late for Congress to take action to protect the 2024 elections from AI?

REP. BEYER: I hope not. You know, both Ritchie Torres and Yvette Clarke have had legislation for a couple of sessions that would either prohibit the use of AI in election ads and robo calls and the like, or at least require disclosure. And I'm hoping our bipartisan group can come together because, you know, it's both sides have been affected by it, whether it's President Biden's, you know, the fake--the calls that he was making, or Donald Trump with a nice picture with Anthony Fauci that Governor DeSantis put out so.

REP. MOLINARO: Well, last week, it was Trump and Biden playing cards. I don't know if you saw that.

REP. BEYER: No, I didnt see that.

REP. MOLINARO: Is it too late for '24? Likely not. I think that there are, you know, again, regulatory restrictions. The other of course is, we have 50 states that many of them have at least taken some action to restrict. We had an incident in New York with a political leader, and there was a deep fake voicemail message that sent shockwaves. It just reminds the--right, so states being the laboratories of democracy, they can act a little bit more quickly, perhaps not as effectively, certainly not broadly. But they can act a little bit more quickly. And some are both through their boards or organizations of elections or through state legislation. But this is a space that we certainly have to come to some formal agreement on. Because, again, it is--it is about protecting democracy. And let's be--let's be candid. I mean, some of these fakes are better than like the real politicians.

REP. BEYER: And to the notion of the states as laboratories, the more states that do this, the more examples we have of what can work, what might work.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on this point, though, we've seen when we're talking about social media, this issue of disinformation or falsehoods online really divide the parties. I mean, do you think that this will be different, Congressman Molinaro, with AI that, deep fakes is an area where the parties might be able to work together?

REP. MOLINARO: Well, I hope so. I hope so. I mean, at the end of the day, we all want to preserve, you know, our, in quotes our identity. But again, you all have watched what has happened on the national stage. The minute we think we have agreement, we don't. and I certainly don't want to predict the future of a Congress that often is prepared to expect the unexpected or unexpect the expected.

And I just would say, though, I think that the work that we're doing in a bipartisan way does establish the base for what is common ground on this--on this issue as it relates specifically to our elections.

REP. BEYER: And typically, we've been worried about voter fraud, the wrong people voting, ineligible people voting. Now it goes far beyond that to are we delivering completely authentic but dishonest and incorrect messages--you know, the pictures of President Trump and Biden playing cards.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And, Congressman Molinaro, I mean, right now, Trump is the front runner in the Republican field. If he becomes president again, do you expect him to uphold Biden's executive actions on AI?

REP. MOLINARO: Well, I have desperately attempted to stay out of presidential politics for as long as you will allow me, or as long as I will allow myself. I would expect so. But more importantly, I think because there is bipartisan, bicameral support for aggressively and earnestly moving into this space, I will tell you, whether it's presidential action or not, I think congressional action is the most appropriate, period. That is constitutionally supported, and therefore, I think the agenda will continue to move forward with smart people--well, us and smart people--to address that. But again, I think that--I mean, this conversation is just emblematic of what is a bipartisan, bicameral discussion underway every day on this topic.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And, Congressman, before we go, I do want to ask one news of the day question,

REP. BEYER: Ask him about the president.

REP. MOLINARO: All I can tell you is Mike Johnson is still speaker.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, the Senate released its long-awaited bill on border security. This is the most conservative bill that we've seen in years. It has the support of the Border Patrol union. Why doesn't it have your support?

REP. MOLINARO: Well, this is what I'll offer. The president--in my view, the president undid actions. He took executive action that made worse a crisis, period. I believe earnestly that the president ought to take the similar executive action to show in good faith that we have the capacity, he has the capacity and desire to restrict illegal crossings. The bill includes components that I could support--support of law enforcement, more streamlining of the asylum and vetting process. I don't believe it earnestly confronts the root cause of the problem. And unless I can--I think the president needs to--needs to show some leadership in that regard. I just feel like we are at a position now where some want to codify a bit of the crisis instead of addressing the root cause of the crisis. I'm hopeful we can get there. I don't happen to think that the Senate should simply take H.R. 2, which is, I would say, the most conservative security--border security bill ever adopted by Congress. We could say that the Senate Bill is the most conservative ever proposed by Congress. The Senate's got to adopt theirs. We adopt ours. We're supposed to negotiate. That's how it works. I wasn't elected to accept what the Senate offers. The Senate wasn't elected to accept what we offer. We have--we have a divided government and a divided country. There needs to be negotiation to some common ground.

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Congressman Beyer, we're almost out of time, but I want to give you a chance to respond.

REP. MOLINARO: If you want, I can keep talking so he has no time left to counter my position.

REP. BEYER: I think it's sad we have not done meaningful immigration reform since at least 2005. We talk about it every year. We now have something that the right hates on the--on the end and the left hates on the end, which means its probably just where it should be. And I would love to be able to vote for it

MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, we're out of time, so we'll have to leave it there. Congressmen, thank you both for joining us today.

And please stick around for our next segment.

REP. MOLINARO: Thank you.

REP. BEYER: Thank you very much.

MS. MOORE: Hello, thank you all for being with us today. I'm Linda Moore. I'm the CEO of TechNet. And if you're not familiar with TechNet, we were founded in 1997 in Silicon Valley to work with policymakers to make sure that we seize the opportunities and address the challenges of making sure that America is the most innovative country on Earth.

Representative Eshoo, who's here with me today, remembers the beginning of TechNet, I'm sure. We're advocating a targeted policy agenda at the federal and the 50-state level, and we're excited to talk to you about AI today, just the latest in a long series of technologies that America has led.

In the time that Representative Eshoo has been in Congress for over 30 years, she has seen the evolution of technology. And I want to ask her a little bit about that today so she can share with you her perspective. She represents the 16th District of California, which represents Silicon Valley, also has Stanford University.

And we're so happy to have you here with us today. I know you're extremely busy, so thank you.

REP. ESHOO: Thank you, Linda. It's great to be with you, great to be with everyone. And thank you to The Washington Post for sponsoring this forum. Wonderful.

MS. MOORE: So, I want to ask you, in your 30 years that you've been in Congress now, you've seen the evolution of the internet, smartphones, and now we have AI. So, in that time, you know, how do you view the evolution of technology in America and its impact on the U.S. and the world?

REP. ESHOO: Well, I think I've had a front row seat to all of this, and it is--it really is a revolution, I think going back to the industrial revolution. When I first was elected to Congress 1992--the year of the woman, I think they meant it just to be that year--but when you think of how we accessed music, it was CDs, it was records. If there was--well, there was the beginning of phones, but they were practically the size of backpacks. So many of the companies that we are totally familiar with now, some of them hadn't even been born. And some had but they were in their infancy. So, there has been an extraordinary, extraordinary change over the years.

Now music, information is at our fingertips. It's all in a computer that fits in our pockets. So, it's been a real revolution. And I'm very proud that so much of the innovation has come from my congressional district and it continues to.

MS. MOORE: Yeah, one of the things that we were talking about a few moments ago was the fact that, you know, there are a lot of people out there who feel that AI just burst upon the scene with ChatGPT, but we know that that's not the case. It's been around for a very long time. We've been using it in our daily lives, and it's powered everything from GPS to other technologies. So, can you share, you know, your view on the evolution of AI in particular?

REP. ESHOO: Well, very recently I was chatting with a dear friend of mine, and very early in her career, she worked at Stanford Research Institute, at SRI, and that was in the in the '70s. And she was telling me how she audited reports relative to AI. She edited, did a great deal of editing. I didn't know that she had done that. But it was so interesting to me the dates of when that occurred. So, it--artificial intelligence has been around for a long time.

But what's new about it are the large language models and the generative AI. And of course, last, what, November, December, when ChatGPT came out with what they came out with, it was--it was extraordinary. And for most people in the country, I think, it was their first hearing about AI. But it's not brand new.

REP. ESHOO: It is--it's something that I think holds a great deal of promise, Linda, but also the peril. And depending on, I think, what Congress does with it, that we can avoid the peril and enlarge the promise.

MS. MOORE: Exactly, a goal that we share with you, for sure.

I want to ask you about your bill, the CREATE AI Act. I know there's a hearing in the House Science Committee today about that. So, can you tell us a little bit about the purpose of that bill?

REP. ESHOO: Well, when I leave here, I'm going to be going directly to that hearing at science, space, and technology. The CREATE Act and the forerunner to the CREATE Act which was in a previous Congress legislation that I carried, was really originally shaped at Stanford University, which is in the heart of my congressional district. Stanford has its Human-Centered AI Institute, and we worked together to shape the following. First, the original legislation from a previous Congress was to create a task force of experts that would look across AI and make recommendations--this is very broad--make recommendations to the Congress on it. I passed that legislation in a previous Congress, and now the CREATE Act.

These experts really made the recommendation that there be a national AI research resource. And I think simply put, it's to democratize AI. What is held today, in terms of resources, are really the very large technology companies, because it takes enormous data. It takes enormous resources to--you know, to draw from.

We have many sectors in the country. We have the public sector, we have the private sector, we have the medical sector, we have nonprofit, we have academic. So, this legislation is to--it's public and private. But those resources would be available to all sectors.

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Transcript: The Futurist: The Rise of AI - The Washington Post