Tech leaders discuss artificial intelligence policy in senate meeting

The meeting, which was organised by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer included personalities with diverging views on how to write the rules for AI

More than 20 tech and civil society leaders, including the chief executives of five of the 10 biggest US companies, appeared at a closed-door Senate meeting on Wednesday to shape how artificial intelligence is regulated.

The meeting, which was organised by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, included a prestigious, and possibly combustible, mix of personalities with diverging views on how to write the rules for AI. The CEOs of Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and OpenAI were invited to appear alongside rivals and industry critics to discuss possible guardrails for AI that balance the 

risks and rewards of the technology.
 

Areas of disagreement were apparent throughout the morning session, according to several people who were in the room. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates offered diverging views on the risks of open-source AI research, according to people in the room. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was also met with pushback from Berkeley researcher Deb Raji for appearing to downplay concerns about AI-powered self-driving cars, according to one of the people in 

the room.
 

Apart from policy disputes, there is also personal friction among some of the attendees. Musk (the world’s richest man) previously proposed a cage fight with Zuckerberg (the world’s 10th richest man) and took to his own social media platform to criticise Gates (the world’s 4th richest man) for allegedly shorting Tesla stock.
 

“That’s probably the worst wedding to try to do seating for,” said Humane Intelligence CEO Rumman Chowdhury, one of the panelists.