Congress is still trying to figure out how to make rules for AI.
Lawmakers in the House are pushing for government agencies to quickly and aggressively adopt artificial intelligence technology. This comes when civil rights and business groups are still trying to get new AI rules started.
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, oversees the House Appropriations Committee. This week, the committee released several spending bills that push the government to use AI for everything from national security to office work to finding pests and diseases in crops. Several of these goals would be supported and get millions of dollars in new funds under the bill that the committee is still thinking about.
Even though full AI rules probably won’t be made for a few more months and probably won’t be made this year, lawmakers seem to want to ensure the government uses AI where it can. The GOP majority backs the bills, and Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., vice chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, said agencies shouldn’t have to wait to start using AI.
He told Fox News Digital, “We should help federal agencies use the power and benefits of AI because it has already shown itself to be a powerful tool and will continue to be a great help to our federal agencies.” “For example, the Departments of Energy and Defense have been using AI for technical projects to improve accuracy and do things that humans can’t do.”
Beyer also said that he is “encouraged” by the Department of Defense and intelligence services’ promises to ensure AI is used morally.
In the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security, there is a language that would pay for AI and machine learning to help review cargo packages at U.S. ports and for port checks.
“As the Committee has said before, delays in adding AI, machine learning, and autonomy to the program mean that CBP Officers have to look through thousands of images by hand to find strange things,” says the bill’s report text. “Automation makes it less likely that drugs and other illegal goods will be missed, and it makes it easier to stop drugs from getting into the country.”
The bill tells DHS to use “commercial, off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities” to help catch people and things that shouldn’t be allowed into the United States. It also asks DHS to investigate how AI could be used to police the border, ensure the right immigrants without papers are taken away, and at the Transportation Security Administration.
The bill to fund the Defense Department from the committee includes a warning that the Pentagon isn’t moving fast enough to use AI technologies.
The study said, “Capabilities like automation, artificial intelligence, and other new business practices that are easily adopted by the private sector are often ignored or under-used by the Department.” “This bill takes strong steps to deal with this problem.”
The bill, among other things, tells the Department of Defense (DOD) to look into how AI can be used to “significantly reduce or eliminate manual processes across the department.” This is a good enough reason to cut the general defense staff by $1 billion.
The bill also wants the Department of Defense (DOD) to report on how it can measure its efforts to use AI and hire more student interns with AI experience.
The spending bill gives money to Congress and wants legislative staff to look into how AI could be used to make closed captioning services for meetings and how AI could be used in other ways to improve how the House works.
AI is also needed at the Department of Agriculture, according to lawmakers in the House. The bill adds more money for AI to an agricultural research program run by the U.S. and Israel. It also suggests using AI and machine learning to find pests and diseases in crops and supports ongoing work to use AI for “precision agriculture and food system security.”
Even though Congress has been getting more and more pressure to quickly set rules for this new technology already being used by many people, they are trying to use AI more in the government. Several hearings have been held on this subject by the House and Senate. These hearings have brought up ideas like a new government body to control AI and an AI committee.
But Congress keeps moving slowly, even though the situation is urgent. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said last week that he still wanted to take a few months to get feedback and that Congress might not pass a plan to regulate AI until next year.
Last week, he said, “Later this fall, I will bring together the best minds in AI here in Congress for a series of AI Insight Forums to build a new foundation for AI policy.”
The full committee will cover these and other spending bills in the coming months. Republicans have clarified that they want to move funding bills for the fiscal year 2024 on time this year, which means finishing by the summer.
