Obernolte: House is still choosing priorities on AI law

Rep. Jay Obernolte said Wednesday his near-term priority as vice chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus is picking a lane on how to legislate the emerging technology.

“Are we going to do a broad-based approach with a new agency? Potentially like the EU has done? Or are we going to adopt a sectoral approach, where we empower our existing sectoral regulators to regulate AI within their sectoral spaces?” Obernolte (R-Calif.) said at POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit.

Obernolte’s basic questions reflected a Congress still in the early phases of regulation. In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this month convened an “AI Insight Forum” of tech leaders, not long after he laid out a framework in June for Congress to get on a path toward comprehensive regulation. But some lawmakers have urged for more efficiency in the legislative process to match the breakneck pace of innovation.

Michael Kratsios, former U.S. chief technology officer and now managing director of the San Francisco-based Scale AI, said at the summit that the release of ChatGPT “fundamentally changed the dynamic in Washington” and made the conversation around AI more urgent and concrete.

“It is something that everyday Americans can touch, feel and play with personally,” he said. “Before it was just sort of this, you know, 'Terminator' dream in the movies or something that was happening, maybe in some factory somewhere through a robot.”