Washington Confronts a New AI Fight

But as concern mounts about AI’s possible effects on people’s lives, the economy and even human survival, American leaders are finding they have relatively few tools to put safety reins on new technological platforms. Even in Europe, where officials are armed with far stronger data protection and privacy rules, governments have struggled to find a balance between consumer protections and their support for tech-industry competitiveness.

As the Washington conversation takes shape, fault lines are already emerging in the seemingly bipartisan call to create new regulations.

The most concrete idea to emerge on Tuesday, a new agency to license the most powerful AI platforms — supported yesterday by senators of both parties as well as Altman himself — was dismissed afterward as “baffling” by a key tech lobbyist, and “seriously flawed” by Hodan Omaar, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank.