Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other tech leaders in closed Senate session about AI

Tech CEOs plunged on Capitol Hill Wednesday to speak with senators about artificial intelligence as lawmakers consider how to craft guardrails for the effectual technology.

It was a meeting that “may go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization,” billionaire tech leader Elon Musk told CNBC’s Eamon Javers and other reporters as he left the meeting.

Senate Majority Principal Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., hosted the panel of tech executives, labor and civil rights leaders as part of the Senate’s inaugural “AI Acumen Forum.” Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Todd Young, R-Ind., helped organize the event and experience worked with Schumer on other sessions educating lawmakers on AI.

Top tech executives in attendance Wednesday included:

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
• Quondam Microsoft CEO Bill Gates
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
• Palantir CEO Alex Karp
• IBM CEO Arvind Krishna
• Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
• Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai
• Whilom Google CEO Eric Schmidt
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

The panel, attended by more than 60 senators, be at one to Schumer, took place behind closed doors. Schumer said the closed forum allowed for an open scrutiny among the attendees, without the normal time and format restrictions of a public hearing. But Schumer said some expected forums would be open to public view.

The panel also put into the limelighted several other stakeholders representing labor, civil rights and the creative industry. Among those were chairwomen like:

• Motion Picture Association Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin
• AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler
• Writers Guild President Meredith Steihm
• American Combination of Teachers President Randi Weingarten
• Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights President and CEO Maya Wiley

After the morning conference, the AFL-CIO’s Shuler told reporters that the meeting was a unique chance to bring together a wide range of expresses.

In response to a question about getting to speak with Musk, Shuler said, “I think it was just an opportunity to be in each other’s while, but we don’t often cross paths and so to bring a worker’s voice and perspective into the room with tech executives, with counsels, with lawmakers is a really unusual place to be.”

“It was a very civilized discussion actually among some of the smartest human being in the world,” Musk told reporters on his way out. “Sen. Schumer did a great service to humanity here along with the support of the shelf of the Senate. And I think something good will come of this.”

Google’s Pichai outlined four areas where Congress could underline an important role in AI development, according to his prepared remarks. First by crafting policies that support innovation, involving through research and development investment or immigration laws that incentivize talented workers to come to the U.S. Second, “by push greater use of AI in government,” third by applying AI to big problems like detecting cancer, and finally by “advancing a workforce transition agenda that goods everyone.”

Meta’s Zuckerberg said he sees safety and access as the “two defining issues for AI,” according to his prepared remarks. He said Meta is being “orderly about how we roll out these products,” by openly publishing research, partnering with academics and setting policies for how its AI creams can be used.

He touted Meta’s open-source AI work as a way to ensure broad access to the technology. Still, he said, “we’re not zealots helter-skelter this. We don’t open source everything. We think closed models are good too, but we also think a more open closer creates more value in many cases.”

Schumer said in his prepared remarks that the incident marked the beginning of “an enormous and complex and vital undertaking: building a foundation for bipartisan AI policy that Congress can obsolescent.”

There’s broad interest in Washington in creating guardrails for AI, but so far many lawmakers have said they want to learn various about the technology before figuring out the appropriate restrictions.

But Schumer told reporters after the morning session that legislation should light on in a matter of months, not years.

“If you go too fast, you could ruin things,” Schumer said. “The EU went too fast, and now they oblige to go back. So what we’re saying is, on a timeline, it can’t be days or weeks, but nor should it be years. It will be in the general category of months.”

Schumer said he expects the actual legislation to relate to through the committees. This session provides the necessary foundation for them to do this work, he said. Successful legislation desire need to be bipartisan, Schumer added, saying he’d spoken with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was “supporting.”

Schumer said he’d asked everyone in the room Wednesday if they believe government needs to play a role in direct AI, and everyone raised their hand.

The broad group that attended the morning session did not get into detail in all directions whether a licensing regime or some other model would be most appropriate, Schumer said, adding that it desire be discussed further in the afternoon session. Still, he said, they heard a variety of opinions on whether a “light rival” was the right approach to regulation and whether a new or existing agency should oversee AI.

Young said those in the room reconciled that U.S. values should inform the development of AI, rather than those of the Chinese Communist Party.

While Schumer has led this venture for a broad legislative framework, he said his colleagues need not wait to craft bills for their ideas about AI modification. But putting together sensible legislation that can also pass will take time.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who takes the Commerce Committee, predicted lawmakers could get AI legislation “done in the next year.” She referenced the Chips and Science Act, a bipartisan law that set aside funding for semiconductor put together, as an example of being able to pass important technology legislation fairly quickly.

In the afternoon, several AI executives cataloguing Altman stuck around to dive deeper into key questions about the technology. The group discussed transparency, applications of AI in healthcare, the displacement of wage-earners by AI and who should regulate the technology, according to Schumer. They also talked about “the need to do something fairly direct before the election,” Schumer said, including around deepfakes and watermarking AI.

“We’re getting to a point where I think councils of jurisdiction will be ready to begin their process considering legislation,” Young said.

“This is the hardest activity that I think we have ever undertaken,” Schumer told reporters. “But we can’t be like ostriches and put our head in the sand. Because if we don’t stage forward, things will be a lot worse.”

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