AI leaders warn Senate of twin risks: Moving too slow and moving too fast | TechCrunch

Leaders from the AI research world appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss and answer questions about the nascent technology. Their broadly unanimous opinions generally fell into two categories: we need to act soon, but with a light touch — risking AI abuse if we don’t move forward, or a hamstrung industry if we rush it.

The panel of experts at today’s hearing included Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei, UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell and longtime AI researcher Yoshua Bengio.

The two-hour hearing was largely free of the acrimony and grandstanding one sees more often in House hearings, though not entirely so. You can watch the whole thing here, but I’ve distilled each speaker’s main points below.

Dario Amodei

What can we do now? (Each expert was first asked what they think are the most important short-term steps.)

1. Secure the supply chain. There are bottlenecks and vulnerabilities in the hardware we rely on to research and provide AI, and some are at risk due to geopolitical factors (e.g. TSMC in Taiwan) and IP or safety issues.

2. Create a…