As warnings rapidly mount over the pace and potential dangers of artificial intelligence development, the top Republican and Democrat in the House agreed on Sunday that Congress should put guardrails in place, but would not commit to specific policies or a timeline for doing so.<\/p>\n
Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, urged caution in an interview with NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d saying that the House could not hastily pass regulations and that lawmakers needed to ensure American companies remain competitive with Chinese A.I. firms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to rush in and pass a piece of legislation that would do harm to the country and put China at an edge,\u201d Mr. Johnson, who controls what legislation comes to the House floor, said. \u201cAnd so we\u2019ve got to do this carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, criticized Mr. Johnson for moving too slowly, saying in an interview on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week\u201d that the House should take \u201cdecisive action.\u201d But when he was asked for specific restrictions that he might back, Mr. Jeffries would not elaborate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we\u2019ll have that conversation this week upon our return,\u201d he said. Mr. Jeffries is considered the leading contender to become speaker if Democrats take control of the House after the midterm elections.<\/p>\n
The House will return to Washington on Monday for what is scheduled to be its final week in session before November\u2019s midterm elections, a short timeline that makes it nearly impossible for lawmakers to quickly adopt a comprehensive framework for A.I. regulations.<\/p>\n
Though politicians from both parties have warned about the need to regulate A.I. development, the drumbeat of ominous warnings<\/a> about the technology has increased significantly in recent weeks. Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic, resigned<\/a> on Tuesday, saying in social media posts that he believed that the top A.I. companies were not developing the technology responsibly.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Anthropic\u2019s chief executive, Dario Amodei, called for tech companies to slow the pace<\/a> of their development in the face of worries about the technology\u2019s safety. Several other tech executives \u2014 including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, the billionaire whose company SpaceX has been increasing its spending on A.I. \u2014 said they backed that effort.<\/p>\n