Speaker Johnson states that Congress “needs to play” a role in artificial intelligence during a meeting with the CEO of OpenAI.
House Speaker Mike Johnson described the meeting as “very good.”
On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the United States Capitol to explore the role of Congress in artificial intelligence legislation.
“It was a very good meeting,” Johnson later told reporters. “We talked about where we are with regard to the approach of Congress to AI.”
He stated that they had a “very thoughtful discussion” about how the Senate and House might chart a bipartisan course forward.
“AI has limitless potential, but we all agree, and Sam agrees, that it also has some risks.” And so Congress has a role to play in figuring all of that out, and we’re in the midst of doing so,” Johnson added.
When asked by Fox News Digital, Altman refused to go into detail about what they talked.
“I’m grateful for how much he cares about the issue and excited to see what the legislative process will do,” he stated in reference to the meeting.
“It was a sort of pretty high level meeting, just about trying to balance this sort of tremendous upside and figure out how to mitigate the risk but make sure that the U.S. does really great here,” he said.
On Friday morning, Johnson did not respond to a shouted question from Fox News Digital about whether he had any follow-up plans on AI after the meeting.
The discussion comes a day after the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee announced the formation of a bipartisan working group to study the impact of artificial intelligence on the financial industry.
“The rapid advance of artificial intelligence technology holds immense promise to transform society and our economy for the better, but it also comes with risks,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. “The Working Group will investigate the potential of this technology, particularly its application in our financial system.” It will also seek methods to employ artificial intelligence to promote a more inclusive financial system, while establishing the United States as the world leader in AI development and application.”
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said the committee would “investigate the ways in which this technology may embed historic inequities in the financial services and housing markets through the use of data that reflects underlying bias or discrimination.”
