As artificial intelligence becomes more commonplace, Congress is attempting to put in place some regulations designed to mitigate against potential risks.
Proponents of the technology say it can do everything from help mitigate data entry to aiding the entertainment industry use to its potential in immigration and law enforcement.
Unlike other technologies, AI began and has thrived in the public sector rather than as a military program as other previous technologies before it were developed such as aviation as we know it and email.
One of the ongoing issues Congress is working on is attempting to regulate AI.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, co-founded and serves as co-chairman of the Senate AI Caucus where he and his colleagues work to allow AI to grow while trying to ensure it is more beneficial than threatening.
“I’ve authored a bipartisan roadmap designed to harness AI’s potential for groundbreaking scientific and medical progress while strengthening America’s global leadership,” Heinrich told the NM Political Report in an emailed statement. “Most importantly, my roadmap lays out the guardrails necessary to mitigate the risks of AI. As we head into the next Congress and a new administration, I remain firm in my commitment to help develop and deploy AI responsibly— while also unleashing American innovation, safeguarding Americans’ data, and equipping people, from law enforcement to small business owners, with the tools they need to do their jobs.”
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One piece of legislation aimed at mitigating AI risks is the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024, or DEFIANCE Act, which passed the Senate in July and awaits hearings in the House.
The act seeks to protect victims of digital forgeries, or deepfakes, by allowing victims to seek punitive damages in district court.
“Because of the harms caused by non-consensual, sexually intimate digital forgeries, such digital forgeries are considered to be a form of image-based sexual abuse,” the act states.
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to rescind some or all of President Joe Biden’s regulation-heavy executive order from November 2023, according to the nonprofit public policy think tank Brookings Institute.
Which means the new Trump Administration is most likely going to roll back previously established regulations.
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Another aspect is increasing AI import control.
“The second Trump administration is likely to further strengthen AI-related export restrictions. A key challenge that the Biden administration encountered and that the new Trump administration will also face is the limited effectiveness of these rules,” according to Brookings.
With federal regulations on the line, the potential for a checkerboard regulatory approach by states could become the norm under Trump.
This checkerboard approach could be hard for AI companies to comply with, according to GZERO Media, a subsidiary of global risk analysis firm Eurasia Group.