Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) argues in a CNN interview that lawmakers don’t need to be AI experts to regulate the technology effectively, comparing AI regulation to the safety standards established for cars and pharmaceutical drugs. Ansari said anything other than action on AI is an “abdication” of Congress’s responsibility. “This is an AI arms race and we need to win,” Ansari said. “You heard the president say, you know, we need to win this race. But the truth of the matter is that whoever wins AI, AI actually wins.” “What we need here really is an international treaty,” Ansari continued. “We need the United States to lead an effort with China, with our allies to have global rules of the road for artificial intelligence and for frontier AI in particular.” “The truth also is that, you know, nobody in the world, no country, whether they’re a friend or a foe, will benefit from artificial superintelligence. This is a technology that will go beyond human control and will impact all of us. Again, AI is not going to care if you speak English or if you speak Mandarin.” <\/p>\n
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us right now to talk about this is Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona, Yassamin Ansari. Thank you for coming in, Congresswoman. As this is revealed with this, kind of, the latest string of incidents of AI agents going rogue, you are spearheading an effort to try to push the President of the United States to take action, to lead an international effort to set some global AI rules. A letter that’s going to start circulating today to call on Trump to lead a coordinated effort among governments to preserve global national security in the face of AI advancements. What are you trying to do with this letter? REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI (D-AZ): Well, look, when you talk about this issue, you know, and the fact that we need to regulate AI urgently, given all of the calls from not just the top of these AI companies, but engineers and scientists and people like Dr. Hinton, who is considered the godfather of AI and has been working on this technology for years. They are warning us that we need to regulate immediately. But the response that we often hear is that, well, what about China? China is going to move ahead and China will — you know, this is an AI arms race and we need to win. You heard the president say, you know, we need to win this race. But the truth of the matter is that whoever wins AI, AI actually wins. And that is because all of these experts are telling us and what we have seen from the horrifying Hugging Face incident and so many others is that ultimately AI is able to go rogue and go beyond human control. And so what we need here really is an international treaty. We need the United States to lead an effort with China, with our allies to have global rules of the road for artificial intelligence and for frontier AI in particular. This is incredibly important. The truth also is that, you know, nobody in the world, no country, whether they’re a friend or a foe, will benefit from artificial superintelligence. This is a technology that will go beyond human control and will impact all of us. Again, AI is not going to care if you speak English or if you speak Mandarin. It can threaten every single one of us. So President Trump has a real opportunity to lead here. He will be meeting with Xi Jinping next week. It’s the U.N. General Assembly. We’ve heard that there is also a meeting with Sam Altman in the books. But I think we need a global framework just like we have with nuclear weapons. And so a large group of members of Congress are urging the president to take action. This should not be partisan. And this should also not be — it’s not just simply an American issue. It’s a global issue. BOLDUAN: There are some really, I’ve heard from Republicans, mostly some Republicans, though, who seem wary about Congress’s role in this and the fact that and wary that Congress can come up with effective regulation to put some guardrails around AI advancements as it moves so quickly. Let me play this for you. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think that senators even understand AI? That most lawmakers. SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): No, a lot of them can’t spell it. They just don’t have the experience. REP. RICH MCCORMICK (R-GA): Let’s face it. When the average congressman or senator is getting up there and they have a hard time turning on their cell phone and your staff has to figure out how to do things for you technically. How are we supposed to govern AI from that perspective? (END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: Do you see that here? Hear that? Do you agree with that sentiment? ANSARI: No, I can’t tell you how angry that makes me. This is an outrageous response. Congress is a representative body of the population of the United States. The population of the United States is terrified of AI. New polling has just shown that the majority of Americans do feel that AI is a threat to humanity and also fear the incredible job loss that is to come because of artificial intelligence. Look in Congress, yes, we are not experts on everything. That’s not the point. The point is that we can create regulations or create regulatory bodies with experts. When cars were first manufactured, cars had to be regulated. We added seatbelts. We added airbags. We made them safe. Pharmaceutical drugs. Imagine if drug companies just put out a drug onto the market without the FDA looking at those drugs, testing those drugs and ensuring that they were safe to consume for the American public. It is exactly the same with AI right now. We have these massive AI companies racing to build this technology. They’re putting products out there that are not safe. AI has already led to people committing suicide, to guiding people into how to commit mass shootings. We’ve already seen instances of this. It’s just the beginning. And now that they’re going rogue and proving that ultimately, they will not listen to humans, it’s essential that we regulate and we have to move very quickly. I really want to emphasize that. I think that it is just beyond the pale that Mike Johnson has called off Congress a day earlier than the two weeks earlier that he already canceled Congress. We were adjourned yesterday. We’re going home for seven weeks. And during that time, we’re going to see this frontier AI technology continue to evolve, continue to cause damage. And it’s going to get to a point where it will be impossible to go backward if we don’t move quickly now. And that is our job. Anything other than that is a complete abdication of Congress’s responsibility to the American people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n