Bipartisanship is in increasingly rare supply these days, but in the final weeks of the lame-duck Congress, there’s a last-ditch effort to make some progress on AI regulation.
Republicans and Democrats in both chambers are optimistic about a bill to make permanent the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, which President Joe Biden created last year by an executive order. President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign platform included a promise to repeal that order, meaning the future of the AISI could be in jeopardy.
Republicans — who rarely want more regulation of anything — are actually the most optimistic that a version of the bill is signed into law before Congress wraps up. One way that might happen: the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), one of Congress’ main priorities in the lame-duck session.
“I’m very optimistic,” said Rep. Jay Obernolte, a California Republican who co-sponsored the House version. “I am highly confident that at least part of it will be able to move — I don’t know if that’s through the NDAA or stand-alone or through another vehicle — but we’re definitely gonna try and find a home for it.”
Obernolte co-chairs a bipartisan AI task force, whose report and recommendations are scheduled to come out sometime in “the next few weeks,” he said. Getting the AISI into statutory law is one of his main priorities, he told NOTUS. The legislation would change the agency’s name and formally establish it under federal law.
His California colleague, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, is the other co-sponsor of the House bill and co-chair of the task force. Lieu said he hoped the bipartisan support for the legislation could get it across the finish line.
“I think there’s a reasonable shot of it,” Lieu said Tuesday.
Even though the AISI was a Biden creation, Republicans in both chambers see the need for it. One main goal of the AISI is establishing a standard for “red-teaming procedures,” which simulate attacks to test an AI system’s resilience, and creating voluntary watermarking standards for developers to include in their models. It’s sheltered within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a research agency at the Department of Commerce that sets standards and measures for industries.
There might be room for the AISI in Trump’s AI agenda. Axios reported that Trump is considering naming an AI czar in the White House, who could use AI to identify government waste, likely in collaboration with the AISI and the nascent Department of Government Efficiency.
The tech industry has signaled its support for a more permanent AISI. In October, a group of tech companies and other organizations, including Microsoft, IBM, OpenAI and Anthropic, sent a letter to Congress backing the legislation.
“Codifying this work at NIST before the end of this year will help ensure that the U.S. maintains its influence in the development of science-backed standards and technical work that underpin our shared goal of responsible development of advanced AI systems,” read the letter.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who added his name to the Senate bill last week, said he sees the value of the AISI proposing standards for the AI industry all at once. He and other Republicans also view its benefits in part from a global competition perspective.
“I think it bodes well long-term for the economic development within our country to have that in place,” Rounds said. “And at the federal level, we can’t afford to have every single agency or department trying to hire their own AI experts. But if you have them nested in NIST, then you have at least the ability for everybody to participate, and their technological expertise.”
Even if the AISI does get authorized formally, there’s an open question about how it gets funded. The AlSI is currently operating with a $10 million grant Congress gave it in March. But NIST is notoriously underfunded, and the original executive order didn’t direct any money toward it.
Rep. Bill Foster, a Democratic member of Obernolte and Lieu’s task force, was less optimistic about the outcome for the AISI for that very reason. He blamed it on Republicans, who he said are not inclined to issue more regulations of industries or channel money into government programs.
“The Republicans never ever want to sign on to anything that might spend money or might be something that you can portray as regulation,” he said. “And so that’s a big constraint on almost anything.”
Foster had some hope for the multiple bills related to AI research and regulation that passed the Science Committee earlier this year. But without dedicated funding, which Obernolte’s bill and its Senate counterpart do not include, he’s not too optimistic about what can be accomplished, especially compared to a private sector flush with cash.
“If it doesn’t come with more money, it’s just noise,” he said.
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Helen Huiskes and Samuel Larreal are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.