Lawmakers push for AI regulation following OpenAI CEO testimony

Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley joins the Live Show to discuss key takeaways from the AI hearing as senators push for regulation in artificial intelligence.

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Artificial intelligence was in the spotlight yesterday as a hearing including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dove into regulation surrounding the growing technology. Congress made one thing clear, they have learned from prior mistakes with social media. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley joins us now. And we did hear that comparison quite a lot there, Dan.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, that's right, Rachelle. Throughout the hearing we had Senator Klobuchar, Senator Blumenthal basically talking about how when social media was on the rise they didn't do enough to try to regulate it. They kind of focused on Section 230, that's part of the Communications Decency Act. Essentially the legal shield that allows companies to dodge liability for content that they host that's posted by other users. They said they allowed that to basically guide what was going on with social media. And so they missed the boat on how to regulate it.

It just got too big too fast and went past where they had the ability to go in and write new legislation. So they're trying then to keep up with AI. Unfortunately, while the hearing yesterday with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was informative and while there was no acrimonious back and forth between him and the senators, in fact, it was actually very constructive. A lot of different interesting question and answers from the collected senators. There's no real move forward plan at this point.

Senator Blumenthal basically saying that this was the first of several hearings that they're going to host on AI. The problem is the technology now is just moving so fast that while the likes of Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are saying that they want some kind of regulation, Mark Zuckerberg in the past Meta had called for regulation of both social media and AI. It just doesn't look like they're going to be able to do it fast enough to perhaps catch the direction that AI is going. So while they do say that they want this to happen, it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. And just with social media that could prove to be a problem down the line as AI continues to evolve and moves into more and more industries.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Indeed. Despite that concern still seeing all the companies you mentioned pushing forward and releasing new things in AI.