Rep. Lori Trahan Talks Regulating AI & AI FRONTIER Act

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Joe Mathieu (0:07)

We have to talk about AI, I mean SI, super intelligence, Joe, the president is changing the lingo from the US.

Kailey Leinz (0:12)

He did take another swing at that today, he says it might catch on, we'll find out soon enough. The thing is, he talked about the prospect of regulation.

Kailey, which is of course a raging debate, not only here in Washington, but globally right now, and referred to it as a globalist scheme, having called this a hoax repeatedly, it doesn't sound like he's moving on this.

Joe Mathieu (0:32)

Yeah, let's remind ourselves of what the president said in his address to the UN General Assembly.

SPEAKER_4 (0:36)

The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, here and after officially called super intelligence.

Kailey Leinz (0:55)

I'm quite sure that Lori Trahan does not see it as a globalist scheme. The Democratic Congresswoman from Massachusetts is one half of a co-sponsor of a bill and co-author of a bill called the AI Frontier Act. We've told you about it and we've spoken with the representative here before. This is the closest thing that we have seen to a framework for regulations around this very quickly evolving technology on Capitol Hill.

Controversial, yes, but so is everything that matters in Washington. And she's with us right now. From Massachusetts 3rd District, the toast of Lowell. There's a lot to like about Lowell, as they say, Congresswoman. When it comes to this AI debate, I'm wondering your thoughts on what the president said today. If he believes this is a globalist scheme, how can you ever get this through Congress?

Lori Trahan (1:42)

Look, I think the president is not in lockstep with what people are saying back home and what even Republicans in Congress are hearing.

And they're wanting to put basic guardrails in place. I mean, there's no question that the ground has shifted on AI safety. People are concerned at the whistleblower, Jacob Cox, and they're worried about the anthropic threat report. And certainly the 3 CEOs last weekend getting together and admitting that they could lose control of this technology if proper guardrails aren't put in place. And so, the president calling this a hoax or a globalist scheme is just completely out of touch with what people are feeling right now. And while it's challenging, I don't think that it stops Congress from acting like the independent body that it is and moving forward with basic guardrails.

Joe Mathieu (2:46)

Well, of course, part of the argument that the president and those around him have made is that these companies should be self-policing. That OpenAI has an issue with its technology hacking, hugging face, that's on the company. Shouldn't be up to regulators to control that issue. I wonder what your response is and whether or not there does need to be more onus put on the companies themselves. If you trust that they might be able to do this on their own, in the absence of or at least until Congress can get its arms around this legislatively.

Lori Trahan (3:17)

Well, one, I think Congress does has that we do have our arms around what needs to be done.

Look, we've run this experiment before, which is why it's so resonant back home. Because social media doesn't have proper guardrails in place, we're seeing the effects that that has on our children and on so many aspects of our society. So I don't think that that argument holds with Democrats or Republicans. And look, I think that there's been a tipping point just in the last few weeks. The Frontier Act, which I authored with Jay Obernolte, a Republican from California, isn't the only example of Democrats and Republicans coming together on basic guardrails around the frontier. I just think that the frontier is best situated, the Frontier Act is best situated to actually move in Congress, because we wrote it earlier this spring. It's gone through a lot of scrutiny, a lot of iterations based on feedback from safety organizations, industry, consumer advocacy groups, state laws.

And it really does represent the strongest safety AI legislation to date. Mandatory transparency reports, incident reporting, an independent verification organization to check the company's work, and a kill switch. If a model is capable of a catastrophic risk, there is a well understood process for the government to intervene.

Kailey Leinz (4:48)

Really something, Congresswoman, how this story has changed, how the debate has evolved. Since you first wrote this in the spring, I believe you introduced it in July. Even then, AI was pretty hot. When you look at the way the stocks were playing on Wall Street, the stories that were being told around earnings reports, I realized the NIMBY story was beginning around data center. We were starting to hear about it. But now, my goodness, fast forward a couple of months, and you've got this memo from Dario Amadei.