Watch: A conversation on AI governance & growth

The big picture: On Wednesday, February 28, Axios Pro tech policy reporters Maria Curi and Ashley Gold hosted conversations in Washington, D.C. looking at how governments are working quickly to guide the responsible use and development of AI in the tech sector while balancing innovation.

• Guests included Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and NTIA administrator Alan Davidson.

What they're saying: The group of political leaders spoke about how lawmakers are thinking about and crafting legislation responding to questions about AI's potential beneficial uses for good and its ability to do harm.

• Sen. Cory Booker on using AI as a democratizing force: "I've always hoped that technology can have a massive democratizing force … AI offers opportunities to have breakthroughs that we're not even thinking of right now that could begin to level the playing field."
• NTIA administrator Alan Davidson on answering questions around open foundation models: "The homework assignment we were asked to look at is what should our policy be around openness in this space? I think there were a lot of folks who initially looked at this and thought, wow, making models open could create real safety risks … I think there's a countervailing view that it's really important to also think about competition, innovation. We want to make sure that the most important AI technologies aren't just kept in the hands of a few large companies."
• Sen. Mike Rounds on crafting a report from the bipartisan congressional AI working group: "That's the idea behind it, is to kind of just lay out in very general guidelines what we learned, what some recommendations are, and some ideas for developing or looking at different types of legislation, and then once again not telling them it's got to be done at a particular time or anything, but on a very bipartisan basis, what can we all agree on as a background for developing further legislation in the future?"

Sponsored content:

In a View From the Top sponsored segment, IBM Research senior vice president and director Dr. Darío Gil and Meta VP and deputy chief privacy officer Rob Sherman emphasized why open source AI can be beneficial for the tech ecosystem.

• Darío Gil on the debate between open and closed source systems: "One problem with that [a closed system] is that an open innovation ecosystem is absolutely existentially important to the right outcomes of AI and the AI industry … A technology that is so important and profound has to have very diverse economic benefits, meaning it will be a terrible outcome if the AI revolution ends up in the hands of just 3 or 4 corporations rather than broadly diffused in terms of prosperity and institutional diversity."

Thank you to IBM for sponsoring this event.