Congress wants to regulate AI, but it has a lot of catching up to do

Great piece at NPR covering the current state of AI regulation. The EU is perhaps farther along in exploring, though there has been some pushback on the current EU proposal from smart futurists like Shelly Palmer.

For the past several weeks, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has met with at least 100 experts in artificial intelligence to craft groundbreaking legislation to install safeguards.

The New York Democrat is in the earliest stages of talking to members of his own party and Republicans to gauge their interest in getting behind a new proposed AI law.

"Our goal is to maximize the good that can come of [artificial intelligence]," Schumer said. "And there can be tremendous good, but minimize the bad that can come of it. ... But to do it is more easier said than done."

It's all part of a congressional race to try to catch up legislatively to exploding advances in AI.

The article contains some interesting insights from law professor Ifeoma Ajunwa, who co-founded an AI research program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She and other experts suggest that AI has a bit of a branding problem and perhaps would be better off labeled "automated decision-making" to reflect the human decision-making — including values and biases — embedded in it.

It can only be a good thing that healthy debate is already under way in this space - we need more of it and quickly.