On May 16, 2023, Sam Altman appeared before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary. The title of the hearing was "Oversight of AI." The session was a lovefest, with both Altman and the senators celebrating what Altman called AI's "printing press moment"--and acknowledging that the US needed strong laws to avoid its pitfalls. "We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models," he said. The legislators hung on Altman's every word as he gushed about how smart laws could allow AI to flourish--but only within firm guidelines that both lawmakers and AI builders deemed vital at that moment.

Foreign allies and adversaries alike have pushed AI regulations, but Congress has stalled. Lawmakers told Fox News bipartisan efforts are needed to regulate the space. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Members of Congress provided a range of opinions on regulating AI, but several agreed that bipartisanship is the key to moving forward with a framework, lawmakers on Capitol Hill told Fox News. China and the European Union have recently drafted AI regulations, but Congress hasn't passed any legislation since the tech's recent rapid development. Republicans worry that lawmakers could overregulate AI and harm innovation, while Democrats fear that machine learning poses potential threats to consumers.

In the context of rapid discoveries by leaders in AI, governments must consider how to design regulation that matches the increasing pace of new AI capabilities. Regulatory Markets for AI is a proposal designed with adaptability in mind. It involves governments setting outcome-based targets for AI companies to achieve, which they can show by purchasing services from a market of private regulators. We use an evolutionary game theory model to explore the role governments can play in building a Regulatory Market for AI systems that deters reckless behaviour. We warn that it is alarmingly easy to stumble on incentives which would prevent Regulatory Markets from achieving this goal. These 'Bounty Incentives' only reward private regulators for catching unsafe behaviour. We argue that AI companies will likely learn to tailor their behaviour to how much effort regulators invest, discouraging regulators from innovating. Instead, we recommend that governments always reward regulators, except when they find that those regulators failed to detect unsafe behaviour that they should have. These 'Vigilant Incentives' could encourage private regulators to find innovative ways to evaluate cutting-edge AI systems.

Former Obama administration advisors say the White House regulatory AI principles announced this week are a good start in many ways, but they're incorrect in their oversimplified mandate to avoid overregulation of private business use, and that the Trump administration could face an uphill battle in its appeal to the rest of the world. Though the Trump administration has developed a reputation for blaming the Obama administration when things go wrong or trying to erase Obama-era policy, on artificial intelligence policy, at times the Trump administration has remained strikingly similar to its predecessor. This was evident in the AI research and development strategy plan for federal agencies released in summer 2019. In some instances, like with White House deputy CTO and assistant director of AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Dr. Lynne Parker who also served in the Obama administration, the same people drive White House AI policy. The list of 10 AI principles are meant to guide US federal agencies as they consider making rules that regulate AI. White House CTO Michael Kratsios said he wants other countries around the world to adopt similar policies.

Testing specialists Applause have debuted an AI solution promising to help tackle algorithmic bias while providing the scale of data needed for robust training. Applause has built a vast global community of testers for its app testing solution which is trusted by brands including Google, Uber, PayPal, and more. The company is leveraging this relatively unique asset to help overcome some of the biggest hurdles facing AI development. AI News spoke with Kristin Simonini, VP of Product at Applause, about the company's new solution and what it means for the industry ahead of her keynote at AI Expo North America later this month. "Our customers have been needing additional support from us in the area of data collection to support their AI developments, train their system, and then test the functionality," explains Simonini.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged cooperation with Chinese scientists, warned against the threat of misinformation, and advised against overregulation by governments today in a broad-ranging speech about AI ethics and regulation of big tech companies. He also talked about conflict deterrence between nation-states in the age of AI and pondered how secretaries of state might share information in the coming age of artificial general intelligence (AGI). "What are the norms of this? This area strikes me as one that's nascent but will become very important as general intelligence becomes more and more possible some time from now," he said. "We haven't had a common regime around how all that works."