Blumenthal & Hawley to Hold Hearing on Principles for Regulating Artificial Intelligence

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, will convene a hearing on Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 3:00 PM titled “Oversight of AI: Principles for Regulation.” The Subcommittee’s second AI-focused hearing will bring together academic and industry leaders, and follows testimony from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in May.

“This hearing will continue our efforts to oversee and establish safeguards for artificial intelligence,” said Blumenthal. “As we heard in the Subcommittee’s first hearing, it’s our obligation to address AI’s potential threats and risks before they become real. We are on the verge of a new era, with major consequences for workers, consumer privacy, and our society. I’m looking forward to hearing from our witnesses and continuing to have these important conversations about the future of AI.”

“The more we learn about AI’s potential effects on our nation, the more concerned we should be,” said Hawley. “We need strong guardrails that protect consumers, workers, and families from technological development run amok.”

The hearing will include testimony from:

• Dario Amodei, Chief Executive Officer of Anthropic;

• Yoshua Bengio, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montreal and one of the “godfathers of AI”; and

• Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkley.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law has jurisdiction over legal issues pertaining to technology and social media platforms, including online privacy and civil rights as well as the impacts of new or emerging technologies. In May, Blumenthal and Hawley held their first hearing titled, “Oversight of AI: Rules for Artificial Intelligence” which heard from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM Chief Privacy & Trust Officer Christina Montgomery, and NYU Professor Gary Marcus.  

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