During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) questioned Jessica Melugin, the Director of the Center for Technology & Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, about regulating artificial intelligence.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Gentleman yields back.
00:03Gentleman from Virginia is now recognized for five minutes.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:07My goodness, after hearing my friend from California talk,
00:10I'm reminded of the old adage, when you're a hammer,
00:13everything looks like a nail.
00:15And when you're a pro-regulatory Democrat,
00:17everything, every industry, every opportunity to regulate
00:21means drive right in and regulate.
00:24Ms. Malugin, can you speak to what
00:27would happen to the AI industry if the US were
00:30to adopt heavy-handed regulations?
00:35Which country are we in competition
00:38with right now that would take advantage of that
00:40and further run away with development in AI?
00:46I think if American innovators are sufficiently
00:49distracted with regulatory hurdles and legal concerns,
00:53you are taking a limited amount of energy and resources
00:57away from them turning out the best product.
01:00At that point, the alternative for much of the world
01:03will be Chinese products.
01:05So the meta question to keep in mind
01:08is, do you want the world building on US-based products
01:13or China-based products?
01:14That's not to say that the illegal things that
01:17happen in relation to AI shouldn't be addressed,
01:21I think in large part due to already existing law,
01:23or that Congress might not consider new privacy
01:26legislation.
01:28Those are all things that can be considered when problems arise.
01:32But it's important to not lose sight of what we're here to do.
01:35I don't think that most Americans are looking for AI
01:40to be really, really regulated.
01:43I think they're looking for AI to be really, really
01:45prosperous and successful.
01:48Well, to that end, China has a long history
01:50of intellectual property theft, particularly
01:53in AI and semiconductor technology.
01:55How can the US better protect its AI industry
01:57from Chinese espionage?
01:58And should we be more aggressive in sanctioning
02:00Chinese companies that benefit from stolen IP?
02:04I think this sounds obvious, but to the extent
02:07that all of that can work, I think that's great.
02:10But I think at some point, if you're dealing with bad actors,
02:15the way to win is to win.
02:17And I think that you make the biggest mistake
02:19by hampering the efforts of US innovators
02:22with all this sort of the sideshow of all the things that
02:25can possibly go wrong.
02:26Of course, there are going to be challenges and harms that
02:28are very real.
02:29People's jobs will be replaced by a certain amount
02:32of automation.
02:33I will point out that that has been happening
02:35since the dawn of time.
02:36It doesn't mean we don't need to have real attention paid
02:39to those circumstances.
02:41But it's not worth holding an entire country back
02:44in the kind of technology that will benefit
02:46every single American and people around the globe,
02:49hopefully from AI products.
02:51Because we can think of examples
02:53of someone losing their job.
02:54It's a tragic situation for that individual.
02:57But I would hope that the overall benefit
02:59to the economy and to society and prosperity of Americans
03:03compensates in some way for that churn.
03:05That churn is real, but we can't use those examples
03:09as an excuse to hamper an incredibly important
03:12technology.
03:12But at the same time, you have big tech companies
03:15arguing that scraping copyrighted material for AI
03:18falls under fair use.
03:20That this practice could severely
03:22undermine artists, journalists, and content creators
03:24should the US continue to enforce its protections
03:28to prevent AI developers from profiting off
03:31stolen intellectual property.
03:33I think intellectual property with the forward movement
03:36of technology is a bit of a moving target.
03:37I think it's certainly an area where Congress can
03:40look to revisit and adjust as necessary.
03:42I don't know that we're there yet.
03:44But I think that those are very valid concerns.
03:47I'm certainly not here to argue that there
03:50will be no regulatory or legal reaction to AI.
03:53I'm just here to argue that it's better to go cautiously forward
03:57on a case-by-case basis.
03:58And fair use and intellectual property
04:00might very well be one of those.
04:02Now, several lawsuits, including the New York Times
04:04versus OpenAI, argue that AI models unlawfully
04:07use copyrighted content for training.
04:11Given these legal challenges, do you
04:12think courts will ultimately force AI developers
04:15to pay licensing fees?
04:16And how might that impact competition and innovation
04:18in the AI industry?
04:21It's my personal policy not to comment on what courts might do.
04:25It's possible.
04:27I do think one of the pressure points in AI progress
04:30for the US is data sources.
04:33I think the market is innovating.
04:35Even for those synthetic data, there's other solutions.
04:38But new data, more data, is an important balancing
04:43act to keep in mind when you're talking about limiting access
04:46to that for maybe the next companies that come along.
04:48I think that there's trade-offs that need to be weighed there.
04:53There's a balance.
04:54A balance.
04:54There's a balance, as in most of intellectual property law,
04:58I think.
05:00But also, I'll quickly make the point that with data,
05:05it's not always more is better.
05:06We're finding that out.
05:07Up to a certain point, you need a certain amount,
05:10and it needs to be good.
05:11And there's engineering progress that can
05:13be made on top of that data.
05:15But it's not the end-all, be-all that AI,
05:19it's not the only factor that's important for innovation in AI.
05:23Gentleman, yield.