Washington – The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, and Microsoft executives and the Micro Devices Advanced chips manufacturer testified in Capitol Hill about the greatest opportunities, risks and needs that face an industry in which legislators and technologists agree that it could fundamentally transform companies, culture and geopolitics global.
The audience occurs when the race to control the future of artificial intelligence is heating between companies and countries. Altman’s OpenAi is in a furious race to develop the best artificial intelligence model against technological rivals such as Alphabet and Meta, as well as against those developed by Chinese competitors.
“I think this will be at least as great as the Internet, perhaps bigger,” Altman said in his opening comments on AI’s potential to transform society. “For that to happen, infrastructure investment is critical.” Altman urged senators to help introduce the “dual revolutions” of artificial intelligence and energy production that “will change the world in which we live, I believe, in incredibly positive ways.”
Witnesses included Altman; Lisa su, executive director of the AMD semiconductor manufacturer; Michael Intora, co -founder of AI Cloud Computing Startup Coreweave; and Brad Smith, vice president and president of Microsoft. They unanimously urged executives unanimously to help optimize policy for AI -related projects and fundraising.
The audience covered issues ranging from industry debates on chips, jobs, human relations and power generation to more great questions about global competition with China and the European Union.
“China aims to lead the world in AI for 2030,” said Senator Ted Cruz, president of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “In this race, the United States faces a bifurcation along the way. Are we going through the path that encompasses our history of business freedom and technological innovation? Or do we adopt Europe’s command and control policies?”
The senators were widely sober in their interrogation and joined in their concern that the United States maintains their domain in artificial intelligence. The legislators of both parties also raised concerns about the cybersecurity, the privacy of the data and the ability of the AI to create content that can confuse or deceive people.
Some partisan fights emerged. Senator Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, pressed his and Smith about whether the sustainable energy policies of the Biden administration hindered the objective of producing more power for the infrastructure related to AI.
And Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, criticized the cuts of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to federal funds for investigation and agencies such as national laboratories and the National Foundation of Sciences of the Department of Energy, painting them as “an attack of self -sabotage.”
“Does anyone really have confidence that Dege has existed decades ago, would not have reduced the project that created the Internet as an example of innovative and funded research and development in public?” Duckworth asked.
But despite some spikes, the audience maintained a discreet tenor and some bipartisan jokes as legislators and executives discussed the potential of a technology that every present agreed would determine the future of humanity.
“Look, there is a race, but we need to understand what we are running for,” said Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, to witnesses. “It is not just a kind of commercial career, so we can overcome our closest competitor in the public sector or in the private sector. We are trying to win a career to prevail the US values.”
Several of the executives warned against the export controls of the United States that could end up pushing other countries towards China’s technology.
“We totally understand as an industry the importance of national security,” said his. But he added, if he cannot “adopt our technology in the rest of the world, there will be other technologies that will come to play.” These technologies are less advanced today, but will mature over time, he said.
Altman established a direct connection between the ability of the United States to attract global talent and the ability to sell their products worldwide to national security and its international influence.
“The leverage and the power that the USA. “We talk perhaps less about how much people want to use chips and another infrastructure developed here, but I think it is no less important, and we must have as its objective that the entire pile of the United States is adopted for as much as possible in the world.”
The commercial rivalry between the United States and China has weighed a lot in the AI industry, including Nvidia and AMD chips manufacturers based in California.
The Trump administration announced in April that it would restrict the sales of the NVIDIA H20 chips and the AMD MI308 chips to China.
Nvidia has said that the strictest export controls will cost the company $ 5.5 billion. AMD said after informing its quarterly profits this week that will cost the company $ 1.5 billion in lost income in the coming months.
The effects on Additional AI chip controls Established by the administration of former President Joe Biden, who will enter into force next week aimed at more than 100 countries. Politics attracted a strong opposition from NVIDIA and other technological companies, while others were backed by others, including the AI Anthrope company, as a way to prevent sophisticated smuggling operations “from China to obtain records from Shell companies in third countries.
The Commerce Department said in an email on Thursday that Trump plans to replace the “too complex and too bureaucratic” rule of Biden with a simpler but did not say when.
The day before the audience, Altman visited the site of Abilene, Texas, of the massive project of the Stargate Data Center that is being built for Openai in collaboration with Oracle and other partners. The site was chosen for its potential access to a variety of energy resources, including wind and solar energy.
Altman, during the audience, said that Texas had been “incredible” by encouraging the main projects of AI. “I think it would be good for other states,” Altman said. He predicted that Abilene’s site would be the “largest training installation in the world.”
But Altman also warned later against a regulatory mosaic framework for AI.
“It is very difficult to imagine discovering how to comply with 50 different sets of regulations,” Altman said. “A federal frame that is a light touch, which we can understand, and allows us to move with the speed that this moment requires, seems important and well.”
Although the technology industry has a long time on the data centers to execute online services, from email and social networks to financial transactions, the new AI technology behind popular chatbots and generative tools of AI require even more powerful calculation Build and operate.
A report published by the Department of Energy at the end of last year estimated that the necessary electricity for data centers in the United States tripled during the last decade and is projected to double or triple again by 2028 when it could consume up to 12% of the electricity of the nation.
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Associated Press and Openai have a license and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to the AP text files.
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The AP Matt O’Brien technology writer contributed to this providence report, Rhode Island.
