This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 5th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

While members of Congress mash in aid over the threats posed by AI. It's worth taking stock of the assumptions

built into the law that make the benefits of artificial intelligence more difficult to

unlock.

Caters Jack Soloway and Jennifer Huddleston detail a new Senate report on AI and address

the misnomer of certain so-called light touch regulation.

Just when I think, Jen and Jack, as soon as you have laid to rest all of the bad arguments, the pessimism regarding artificial intelligence and its development, for some reason it doesn't seem that Congress really gets that

message and they continue to attempt different ways of regulating AI and finding we discover over and over again that many members

of Congress don't actually understand it that well, certainly for its potential

benefits to humanity.

So can you guys both in turn give me sort of a sense of the state of play with AI right now?

As you mentioned, it seems like every week there's some kind of new bill introduced in Congress,

and some of those have been more notable than others.

One of the most notable recent things that has happened in AI policy was the release of an AI roadmap

from a bipartisan group of senators. This follows a series of AI roundtables with different experts. I participated in one of them on

AI and elections kind of trying to lay out to their their fellow members of the Senate

where they thought there might be policy opportunities and what

direction after all of these closed-door workshops they thought Congress should take.

As you can imagine, with roadmap there were some things in there

that were really positive, were really a sign of the continuation of the

light touch regulation that has allowed the US to flourish.

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