OpenAI’s top lobbyist is on Capitol Hill Monday to meet with lawmakers as anxieties about artificial intelligence abound throughout the country.
The company’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, plans to sit down with a bipartisan mix of members of the House and Senate — including those in leadership, a company spokesperson told POLITICO.
The visit comes days after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in calling for the AI industry to slow the pace of developing the rapidly evolving technology, after an ex-researcher with Anthropic warned AI left unchecked could potentially cause human extinction in a matter of years. The comments have ignited a firestorm of debate about the role of government in setting guardrails around the technology.
Lehane has separately been pushing for state AI safety laws that the industry finds palatable in places like California, Illinois and New York. Congress, meanwhile, has failed to take substantive action. He published a blog post last week about the need for new policies at the state and federal level as the technology’s capabilities has “reached a new chapter.”
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