
Schumer speaks to the media outside the West Wing on Monday. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday will convene AI experts to brainstorm how to address the technology's highest societal impacts.
Driving the news: President Biden's AI executive order unveiled Monday is turbocharging legislative efforts on the Hill.
- Schumer's AI insight forums are meant to keep the momentum going and inform legislation.
- Schumer and the colleagues he's tapped to keep work bipartisan — Sens. Todd Young, Mike Rounds and Martin Heinrich — went to meet with Biden at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the path forward for an AI bill.
- "Everyone knows the executive order was a good first start, very good. But we also need to do the job with legislation. You can't solve this problem without legislation," Schumer said, noting they discussed the importance of working on a bipartisan basis and boosting funding for research.
State of play: The pace of the forums is picking up as the sense of urgency, particularly ahead of an election year, mounts.
- Schumer is going from holding one forum a month to two in one day.
- The third Senate AI forum will run from 10:30am to 12:30pm ET and will focus on workforce.
- The fourth will run from 3 to 5pm ET and will center on high-impact AI.
The workforce session will focus on various economic sectors, including medicine, manufacturing, transportation, energy, entertainment and hospitality, Schumer's office said.
- Company speakers will include Microsoft's Allyson Knox, Accenture's Arnab Chakraborty, Indeed's Chris Hyams and Mastercard's Michael Fraccaro.
- Labor organization speakers will include Communication Workers of America's Ameenah Salaam, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' Austin Keyser, National Nurses United's Bonnie Castillo, Unite Here DC Local 25's Paul Schwalb, and United Food and Commercial Workers International Union's Rachel Lyons.
- Academic speakers will include University of Virginia's Anton Korinek, MIT's Daron Acemoglu and Dakota State University's José-Marie Griffiths.
- Outside group speakers will include American Enterprise Institute's Michael Strain, Center for American Progress' Patrick Gaspard and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Rob Atkinson.
Zoom in: Knox will offer a policy framework based on three pillars, Microsoft spokesperson Kate Frischmann said.
- They include developing AI and basic digital literacy skills, investing in workforce programs (think tech hubs), and providing employers — particularly small and medium-sized businesses — resources to train workers.
Meanwhile, CAP's Gaspard will say that protecting workers will entail reducing their hours instead of resorting to layoffs, implementing a targeted job guarantee and creating a safety net through the unemployment insurance system.
The other side: Many lawmakers and outside groups say AI will hit the workforce hard, but ITIF's Atkison will offer a different take.
- "I am looking forward to discussing why it's unlikely AI will have major employment impacts and why any AI policies should support both AI that complements workers as well as AI that replaces workers, as the latter is critical to boosting needed productivity growth rates," he said in an email.
The high-impact sectors to be examined include health care, financial services and the country's justice system, Schumer said Monday.
- Academic speakers will include Princeton's Arvind Narayanan and Surya Mattu, and NYU's Julia Stoyanovich.
- Company speakers will include ORCAA's Cathy O'Neil, Upstart's Dave Girouard, Clearview AI's Hoan Ton-That, Hugging Face's Margaret Mitchell, Capital One's Prem Natarajan, SAS Institute's Reggie Townsend, Epic's Seth Hain and Google's Tulsee Doshi.
- Outside group speakers will include co-chair of the forthcoming AI Equity Lab at the Brookings Institution Dominique Harrison, Information Technology Industry Council's Jason Oxman, National Fair Housing Alliance's Lisa Rice and Urban League's Yvette Badu-Nimako.
- Service Employees International Union's Janelle Jones will represent labor.
Catch up fast: Schumer's first AI insight forum served as a spectacle of the biggest names in tech, and the second focused on innovation.
