{"id":6955,"date":"2026-04-17T16:50:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/6955\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:50:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:50:22","slug":"lawmakers-gathered-quietly-to-talk-about-ai-angst-fears-followed-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/6955\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers gathered quietly to talk about AI. Angst, fears followed"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MATT BROWN<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A congressional subcommittee on Thursday held a roundtable discussion on the potential of artificial intelligence<\/a>, which took a turn toward the existential as each lawmaker aired their anxieties about the rapidly evolving technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., expressed alarm that federal workers may be using AI chatbots<\/a> to handle sensitive government data. Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., asked whether it should be illegal for AI systems to use someone\u2019s likeness to create pornographic images.<\/p>\n

Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., expressed concerns that AI systems could deny U.S. military forces from taking lethal actions due to a model\u2019s conclusion for \u201cmoral\u201d behavior. And Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., raised concerns about the Trump administration\u2019s use of AI in the war with Iran, the technology\u2019s intensive energy usage and its potential effects on the climate.<\/p>\n

While members of Congress elsewhere debated other major topics \u2014 the scope of the federal government\u2019s surveillance powers, the war with Iran and funding the Department of Homeland Security \u2014 the House Oversight Committee\u2019s subcommittee roundtable on \u201cArtificial Intelligence and American Power\u201d brought executives of AI firms, academics and those implementing AI at major companies together with lawmakers.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s discussion comes as leaders on Capitol Hill grapple with the dizzying pace of global developments in which technology plays a central role. But the conversation quickly considered the potential for artificial intelligence to dwarf every other challenge facing the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in our districts across this country are going to start feeling impacts very soon, and if we don\u2019t start thinking properly and aggressively and proactively about the challenges that AI creates, I fear that we\u2019re going to have a revolution on our hands,\u201d said Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif.<\/p>\n

The subcommittee\u2019s ranking Democrat, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, also expressed optimism about AI\u2019s ability to cure diseases and boost the economy. But Frost, currently the youngest member of Congress, worried that the technology would outpace lawmakers and pose potentially disastrous consequences if not addressed early on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have faith in this institution to actually put the common sense guardrails in place. And then we fast forward ten years, and the house is on fire,\u201d said Frost. \u201cThat won\u2019t be good for anybody, whether it\u2019s the industry or working families and people, or this institution itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., kicked off the meeting with praise for the industry and marveled at how one panelist\u2019s company used AI to automate and fast-track manufacturing in the firm\u2019s factories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s truly like the closest thing to Star Trek I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Burlison said. He later inquired about what congressional districts should do to attract AI firms for business.<\/p>\n

\"PagesFILE \u2013 Pages from the Anthropic website and the company\u2019s logo are displayed on a computer screen in New York on Feb. 26, 2026. (AP Photo\/Patrick Sison, File)<\/p>\n

Many also openly fretted about disclosures from technology firms like Anthropic, which recently announced that its Mythos AI model<\/a>, which the company claims has capabilities so powerful that it is limiting its use to select customers because of its apparent ability to bypass traditional cybersecurity and hack major institutions like banks, government agencies and major corporations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI recognize AI is not going anywhere,\u201d said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., a former Navy SEAL who served in combat. \u201cThat being said, does anyone on this panel feel or believe, in any way, that as we are going down the road in this AI race, we might be simultaneously engineering our own destruction?\u201d<\/p>\n

The assembled experts and industry leaders all highlighted AI\u2019s vast and growing capabilities. They urged lawmakers, alongside their policy recommendations, to be thoughtful and well-informed when making policy.<\/p>\n

Mark Beall, president of government affairs at the AI Policy Network Inc. and a former Pentagon official, warned that Congress risked the country losing its competitive edge on AI if it did not act on key national security concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to kill us,\u201d Robert Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a technology think tank, told lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, I do think it\u2019s important for the federal government to seriously fund AI safety research,\u201d Atkinson continued. \u201cWe need to know a lot more about how the models work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer Overton, a George Washington University law professor, said the incentives for AI companies \u201care really what they should be\u201d when asked by lawmakers whether the firms were good actors.<\/p>\n

\u201cConstituents are looking for you, not for companies, to step up and protect them,\u201d Overton said. \u201cThey\u2019re trusting you, the person that they voted for, to do that, as opposed to companies. That\u2019s the way the system works, right?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MATT BROWN WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A congressional subcommittee on Thursday held a roundtable discussion on the potential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,53,25,580,1670,157],"class_list":{"0":"post-6955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-anthropic","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-chatgpt","12":"tag-congress","13":"tag-openai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}