Washington (AP) – OPENAI CEO, Sam Altman and the leaders of Microsoft and Chipmaker Advanced Devices, have testified on Capitol Hill on the greatest opportunities, the risks and needs facing an industry that legislators and technologists agree could fundamentally transform global affairs, culture and geopolitics.
The audience comes as the race to control the future of artificial intelligence heats up between businesses and countries. Altman’s OpenAi is in a furious race to develop the best model of artificial intelligence against technological rivals like Alphabet and Meta, as well as against those developed by Chinese competitors.
“I believe that it will be at least as large as the Internet, perhaps larger,” said Altman in his opening remarks on the potential of AI to transform society. “For this to happen, investment in infrastructure is essential.” Altman urged senators to help inaugurate the “double revolutions” of artificial intelligence and energy production that “will change the world in which we live, I think, in an incredibly positive way”.
Witnesses included Altman; Lisa SU, Managing Director of the AMD semiconductor manufacturer; Michael Intrator, co-founder of the Cloud Computing AI Coreweave startup; And Brad Smith, Vice-President and President of Microsoft. The four leaders unanimously urged legislators to help rationalize policy for AI and fundraising projects.
The audience lasted subjects ranging from industry debates on flea performance, jobs, human relations and the generation of electricity to greater questions about global competition with China and the European Union.
“China aims to direct the world in AI by 2030,” said senator Ted Cruz, president of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transport Committee. “In this breed, the United States faces a fork on the road. Do we have on the way that adopts our history of entrepreneurial freedom and technological innovation? Or do we adopt Europe’s command and control policies? ”
Senators were generally sober in their questioning and united in their concern that the United States maintained its domination in artificial intelligence. The legislators of the two parties have also raised concerns about cybersecurity, data confidentiality and AI capacity to create content that could confuse or mislead people.
Some partisan fights have occurred. Senator Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, pressed Su and Smith on the question of whether the sustainable energy policies of the Biden administration have hampered the objective of producing more power for infrastructure linked to AI.
And Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, criticized the cuts by President Donald Trump and the billionaire Elon Musk with federal funding for research and agencies like the national laboratories of the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, painting them as “a self-sabeing attack”.
“Does anyone really have confidence that Doge was about decades ago, he would not have reduced the project that created the Internet as an example of research and development funded by waste and funded?” asked Duckworth.
But despite some beards, the hearing has maintained a discreet tenor and certain bipartite jokes while the legislators and managers discussed the potential of a technology that everyone present would determine the future of humanity.
“Listen, there is a race, but we have to understand what we are running for,” Senator Brian Shatz, a Democrat in Hawaii, said to witnesses. “It is not only a kind of commercial race, so we can pay our competitor closest to the public or private sector. We try to win a race so that American values prevail. ”
Trade policy and AI
Several of the leaders have warned against American export controls which could eventually push other countries to Chinese AI technology.
“We fully understand as an industrial the importance of national security,” said Su. But she added, if she cannot “have our technology adopted 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, she said.
Altman has established a direct link between the ability of the United States to attract global talents and to sell its products worldwide to national security and its international influence.
“The lever effect and the power that the United States has of iPhones are the mobile devices that people want the most, and Google being the search engine that people want the most in the world is enormous,” said Altman. “We may speak less about the quantity of people who want to use fleas and other infrastructure developed here, but I think it is no less important, and we must aim to adopt the whole American battery by as many people as possible.”
The commercial rivalry between the United States and China has weighed heavily on the AI industry, including flea manufacturers based in California Nvidia and AMD.
The Trump administration announced in April that it would limit sales of NVIDIA H20 fleas and AMD Mi308 chips in China.
NVIDIA said stricter export controls will cost the company for $ 5.5 billion. AMD said that after reporting its quarterly results this week, it will cost the company $ 1.5 billion in income loss in the coming months.
Still uncertain are Additional commands of the AI fleas Located by the administration of former president Joe Biden who is expected to take effect next week to target more than 100 countries, including a number of American allies. Politics has attracted strong opposition from Nvidia and other technological societies, while it was supported by others, including the Société d’Ia anthropic, in order to prevent the “sophisticated smuggling operations” from China to obtain flea -by -peeled societies in third countries.
The Commerce Department said in an email on Thursday that Trump planned to replace the “too complex and bureaucratic” rule of Biden with a simpler rule but did not say when.
Extension of the AI data center and state competition
The day before the hearing, Altman visited the Abilene project, in Texas, of the Massive Stargate Data Center Project under construction 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 hearing, said that Texas had been “incredible” to encourage major AI projects. “I think it would be a good thing for other states to study,” said Altman. He predicted that the Abilene site would be the “largest AI training center in the world”.
But Altman also warned later against a Patchwork regulatory framework for AI.
“It is very difficult to imagine us to understand how to comply with 50 sets of different regulations,” said Altman. “A federal framework that is light, which we can understand, and that allows us to move with the speed that this moment calls, seems important and well.”
While the technological industry has long been based on data centers to perform online services, email and social media in financial transactions, new AI technology behind popular chatbots and AI generative tools require Even more powerful calculation at build and operate.
A report published by the Ministry of Energy at the end of last year has estimated that the electricity necessary for data centers in the United States has tripled in the last decade and should double or triple by 2028 when it could consume up to 12% of the country’s electricity.
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The Associated Press and Openai have a license and technology agreement which allows OPENAI access to part of the AP text archives.
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The AP technology writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this Providence report, Rhode Island.
