Congress Isn't Ready for the AI Revolution

What happens when millions of people lose their jobs to computers?

- Kevin T. Dugan

THE FIRST MENTION of artificial intelligence in the Congressional Record dates back to 1964, when Senator Hubert Humphrey marveled at machines “that read, that remember, that improve their performance.” Even in that innocent time, politicians had canned takes about such technology. “The computer age is young; but already, let us admit, some laymen in policymaking positions have tended to make three types of speeches on the computer,” Humphrey said. There are speeches of “sheer awe.” Then there are those touting the hours of leisure and convenience computers would provide their human masters. And then the doomsayers: “Good-bye jobs; hello breadlines.”

It turns out that the doomsayers may have had a point. The political understanding of technology, however, has hardly gotten any more sophisticated. At a May 16 hearing on what the federal government should do about the widespread adoption of AI, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut played a recording of a computer-generated voice that sounded uncannily like him reciting a speech that an AI program had written in his style. This was no neat trick, according to Blumenthal. It was an ominous harbinger: “What if I had asked it, and what if it had provided, an endorsement of Ukraine surrendering or Vladimir Putin’s leadership?”