Microsoft president welcomes new AI regulations and laws

Microsoft President Brad Smith said Tuesday that new regulations and laws to govern artificial intelligence are necessary amid the growing use of ChatGPT and other AI tools that have the potential to upend the way people live and work.

The Big Tech executive welcomed Washington policymakers to take a more proactive approach to craft rules for AI in remarks at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.

Mr. Smith’s remarks come soon after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and tech executives met last week with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior officials at the White House to discuss the new AI tools. At the meeting, Mr. Biden underscored the need for the tech companies at the meeting to ensure their products were safe and secure before they were deployed. 

Mr. Smith said Tuesday that tech companies should not be solely responsible for charting new territory in AI.

“As we look to the opportunity for more companies to enter this market and create AI models, inevitably we will need new laws and new regulations and I think it’s right that people in Washington and around the world are already working to define what those should look like,” Mr. Smith said. “That will be an important topic of conversation in the years ahead, but actually in the weeks and months ahead in Washington as well. I look forward to being part of those conversations.”

Microsoft is funding and developing AI tools and the company expects to have a major say in any forthcoming rules from Congress or the executive branch. Microsoft said earlier this year that it made a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, a chatbot that generates text in response to user queries. 

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Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer has already kickstarted the policymaking process for new regulations. Mr. Schumer circulated a framework for potential AI regulations in recent months, according to the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee. 

Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat, recently said he intended to work quickly to turn the framework into legislation and planned to work on a bipartisan basis. His goal for the proposal includes increasing accountability, transparency, and responsibility of AI technologies while reducing the potential misuse of the tools and the promotion of bias and misinformation. 

Mr. Biden’s team has been mum on precisely what AI policies it hopes lawmakers will produce. White House principal deputy U.S. chief technology officer Alexander Macgillivray declined to say on Tuesday whether the White House was working with Mr. Schumer on his proposal. 

“I don’t want to get ahead of the policy process in terms of understanding where we might go for additional new regulation and legislation, but it is something that we are considering,” Mr. Macgillivray said at the CSIS event.  

After Biden administration officials’ meeting last week with tech company executives, the White House unveiled new initiatives designed to lessen risks posed by AI and directed the Office of Management and Budget to issue new guidance about how federal agencies should use AI tools.