Headline, August 16 2023/ ''' AI '' -LAWMAKERS- '' AT '''

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AMONG THE STARTLING - HOPEFUL DEVELOPMENTS that have greeted the advent of  generative artificial intelligence [AI] has been an outbreak of bipartisan focus, curiosity and deliberation in Washington DC.

Legislators and regulators are trying hard to come to grips with the protean technology. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has been holding senators-only briefings with experts to educate his chamber.

In late June, he called for ''a new and unique approach '' to writing legislation about AI, saying it was '' unlike anything Congress has dealt with before ''.

 ''It's not like labour or health care or defence where Congress has had a long history we can work off of,'' he said. '' In many ways, we're starting from scratch.'' 

He has set to a steering group of two Republicans and two Democrats, including himself, and plans this autumn to supplement the normal committee process, or posturing with ''AI Insight Forums'', to include the industry leaders and critics, to do '' years of work in matter of months ''.

It is understandable that wise guys are making fun of this. ChatGPT's first, unfunny stab reflected the cynicism any sentient being might feel : '' Why did the AI refuse to testify before Congress? 

Because it didn't want to be caught in a loop of lawmakers asking the same question over and over.''

Yet Americans should bask in this rare season, while it lasts, of good-faith searching and head-scratching. Not only are the regulators interrogating themselves about where and how they should regulate, the industry itself is asking to be regulated, up to a point.

One danger is that lawmakers could wind up bickering over a problem they can address only at the edges.

Being politicians, they are alert to how political actors are already using AI tools to generate political messages, including fabricated images. For their part journalists, being journalists, are obsessed with AI's potential to create and spread lies.

'' If we get drawn into refighting the social-media wars, we risk not realising the promise of machine learning, '' warns Kent Walker, the president of global affairs at Google and Alphabet.

'' Social media isn't going to cure cancer, but AI has the potential to, and it would be a shame if that promise were politicised. It would be a shame to hold back progress in nuclear fusion because we can't agree about Twitter.''

Chris Meserole of the Brookings Institution, a Washington based think-tank, says, it could also mandate disclosure about the use of AI in products and require transparency into algorithms used in high-risk systems. '' If an autonomous vehicle using AI has an accident, we need to understand what went wrong.''

To Walk Humbly with Chuck Schumer : Congress might also consider export controls for AI models and chips it deems too powerful. It could look at creating an agency to regulate big tech or whether some other means might bolster the agencies' AI expertise.

It could also help universities pay for the computing power they need to conduct AI research in the public interest.

The good news is that these are the sorts of measures that Congress and the Biden administration are weighing. The most striking words in Mr. Schumer's recent speech was ''humility'', as in, '' We must exercise humility as we proceed.'' Like many of his colleagues, Mr. Schumer is not celebrated for the quality.

Nor are the technology companies, but, in the face of AI, they are embracing it, too. Mr Walker notes that AI researchers have spoken of the '' AI half-pipe of heaven and hell'', meaning it tends to be treated as either wondrous or terrible.

'' There's very little market for, ' Well, AI has a lot of important pros and cons, and we have to incrementally navigate, ' '' he says. '' But that's probably where the wisdom is.''

CHINA has forbidden AI-generated images that impersonate people without their consent, and the European Union has proposed sweeping AI rules [ which, like the EU's data rules, may reverberate globally].

But America's reactive, incremental approach to making regulation up as its industries develop has kept it in the lead since the Industrial Revolution, and seems particularly suited to such a rapidly evolving,  disruptive technology.

Maybe AI and America's lawmakers, in the end, can help each other grow up.

AI Wrangling Competition, it seems, has just about started.

The Honour and Serving of the latest Global Operational Research on AI, Lawmakers and the future continues. The World Students Society thanks The Economist.

With most loving and respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society and then Mankind, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world - : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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