In the letter, shared exclusively with FedScoop, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged the LOC’s copyright office to expand an existing “good-faith security research exemption” to include research that exists outside of traditional security concerns, such as bias, arguing that it would be the best path for ensuring a “robust security ecosystem” for tools such as generative AI. 

The letter from Warner, co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, is in response to a petition from Jonathan Weiss, founder of the IT consulting firm Chinnu Inc., that asked the LOC to establish a new exemption to address security research on generative AI models and systems. 

A spokesperson for Warner said in an email that an expansion to the exemption rather than an entirely new exemption “is the best way to extend the existing protections that have enabled a robust cybersecurity research ecosystem to the emerging issues surrounding safe AI.”

Warner’s letter mirrors a Department of Justice response to the same petition last month. The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the DOJ’s Criminal Division wrote that “good faith research on potentially harmful outputs of AI and similar algorithmic systems should be similarly exempted from the DMCA’s circumvention provisions.”

Said Warner: “It is crucial that we allow researchers to test systems in ways that demonstrate how malfunctions, misuse and misoperation may lead to an increased risk of physical or psychological harm.”

The Virginia Democrat, who has introduced bipartisan legislation on artificial intelligence security and emerging tech standards, pointed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework to acknowledge that AI’s risks “differ from traditional software risks in key ways,” opening the door for not only security vulnerabilities but also dangerous and biased outputs. 

The use of generative AI for fraud and non-consensual image generation are among the deceptive practices Warner noted as reasons for consumer protections, such as watermarks and content credentials. Additionally, the lawmaker asked the LOC to ensure that the potential expanded exemption “does not immunize” research that would intentionally undermine protective measures. 

“Absent very clear indicia of good faith, efforts that undermine provenance technology should not be entitled to the expanded exemption,” Warner said. 

The senator also asked the LOC to include security and safety vulnerabilities, especially involving bias and additional harmful outputs, in its expanded good-faith security research definition.

In response to Warner’s letter, Weiss said in an email to FedScoop that he doesn’t “care whether the existing exemption is expanded to include research on AI bias/harmful output, or whether an entirely new exemption is created. Our main concern is to secure protections for good faith research on these emerging intelligent systems, whose inner workings even the brightest minds in the world cannot currently explain.”

The Weiss petition and letters from DOJ and Warner were prompted by the LOC Copyright Office’s ninth triennial rulemaking proceeding, which accepts public input for new exemptions to the DMCA.

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The NSF AI Education Act of 2024, introduced Thursday by Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., supports investments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, part of an effort to “help make certain the U.S. is an AI leader in the next century,” Moran said in a press release. 

The legislation would not only authorize NSF to grant fellowships and scholarships within AI and quantum education — along with awarding fellowships for professional development — but would also allow the agency to conduct an outreach campaign throughout the nation that increases awareness of its educational opportunities. The campaign would prioritize outreach to “rural and underserved areas,” per the bill summary.

“Demand for AI expertise is already high and will continue to grow,” Cantwell said in the release. “This bill will open doors to AI for students at all levels and upskill our workforce to drive American tech innovation entrepreneurship and progress in solving the toughest global challenges.”

The bill would also direct NSF to create publicly available playbooks about introducing AI into classrooms for pre-K through 12th-grade students, with “consideration for rural and economically depressed areas.”

NSF would also be granted authorization to hold a grand challenge for AI education and training that would include strategies for upskilling 1 million workers in the United States. in AI-related areas by 2028. Bipartisan Senate legislation released earlier this month also charges NSF with administering a grand challenge, with $1 million prizes awarded for innovations in AI.   

The bill from Moran and Cantwell also calls for related frameworks that “promote increasing the number of women who receive AI education and training” and ensure that “rural areas of the United States are able to benefit from artificial intelligence education and training.”

“Artificial intelligence has tremendous potential, but it will require a skilled and capable workforce to unlock its capabilities,” Moran said. “If we want to fully understand AI and remain globally competitive, we must invest in the future workforce today.”

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The roadmap outlines policy areas the working group believes “merit bipartisan consideration” and summarizes findings from that group’s insight forums held last year with AI leaders from industry, academia and advocacy groups. In addition to boosting AI spending, the report also covers deepfakes, upskilling workers, and fully funding a National AI Research Resource in its priorities.

“We hope this roadmap will stimulate momentum for new and ongoing consideration of bipartisan AI legislation, ensure the United States remains at the forefront of innovation in this technology, and help all Americans benefit from the many opportunities created by AI,” the working group members said in the roadmap.

The Bipartisan Senate AI Working Group is composed of Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., Todd Young, R-Ind., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. The roadmap comes as legislators in both chambers have explored myriad ways to address the risks and potential of the booming technology but haven’t yet passed broad AI legislation. 

Previewing the announcement last week, Schumer said their approach isn’t to develop one comprehensive plan but rather targeted legislation that addresses specific issues. In a press conference Wednesday, Schumer said the working group’s deliberations were never meant to supplant the work of congressional committees.

“We are very, now, hopeful that the bipartisan momentum that we fostered and the recommendations we made will extend into the committees and their process,” Schumer said. “If anything is going to be accomplished, it has to be bipartisan and it’s going to be done by the committees.”

Schumer also said he plans to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., “in the very near future to see how we can make this bipartisan effort bicameral.”

Among the recommendations in the roadmap, the working group encouraged the executive branch and the Senate Appropriations Committee to reach “as soon as possible” the $32 billion in annual spending on non-defense AI innovation that was proposed by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in its final report. 

That panel, which was made up of people from industry and academia, was tasked with making recommendations to the president and Congress on AI and issued its conclusions in 2021. At the time, their recommended investment would have doubled government research and development spending.

Lawmakers also underscored the need to fund accounts that haven’t reached their full funding potential under the CHIPS and Science Act, “particularly those related to AI.” Among the accounts the lawmakers listed was the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, which is aimed at boosting U.S. competitiveness in critical and emerging technologies through research.

Additionally, authorizing a full-scale National AI Research Resource was included as a policy priority. The NAIRR, which operates under NSF, is currently in a pilot phase and is providing access to industry and federal tools and data needed for AI research, such as access to supercomputers and generative AI models. Lawmakers and administration officials, however, have stressed the need for legislation to codify and fully fund the resource.

The roadmap was immediately met with praise and criticism Wednesday.

Linda Moore, president and CEO of TechNet, applauded the roadmap’s support for funding, including for the AI Safety Institute and legislation to authorize the NAIRR. TechNet, a network of technology CEOs and senior executives, worked to advocate for the passage of the NAIRR legislation with the bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Moore said in a prepared statement. 

By providing funding for those initiatives and others, “Congress will empower a new generation of AI leaders, expand innovation and opportunity beyond Silicon Valley, and keep America at the forefront of scientific development for generations to come,” Moore said.

Meanwhile, Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of Accountable Tech, called the roadmap “another proof point of Big Tech’s profound and pervasive power to shape the policymaking process.” Accountable Tech is an organization focused on reining in Big Tech.

Gill called the insight forums a “dream scenario for the tech industry” and alleged that companies “played an outsized role in developing this roadmap and delaying legislation.” She also said the roadmap “is most concrete in offering a roadmap for industry priorities while merely hand-waving toward many of the most pressing challenges associated with the widespread adoption of AI.”

This story was updated May 15, 2024, with comments from Schumer’s press conference Wednesday.

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“Very soon our group is going to release a policy roadmap highlighting many of the findings and areas of consensus from these forums,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said at the AI Expo for National Competitiveness in Washington. 

The AI working group’s “insight forums” featured AI leaders from industry, academia and advocacy, and covered topics such as risks, transparency, privacy, workforce, and how the technology might impact certain sectors. 

Schumer underscored the importance of innovation in his remarks, saying it must be the “North Star.” He noted that there is agreement over the idea that actions they take should encourage innovation but also be balanced with “proper guardrails.” He also called the efforts “exceedingly ambitious.”

While legislators in both chambers have shown interest, Congress hasn’t yet advanced its own broad legislation to address the risks and potential of the technology. The Biden administration released its executive order on AI in October that spans both risks and the potential of AI, but many issues still need congressional action.

According to Schumer, the roadmap will “give the public, those in the community, those in the industry, an idea of what our broad framework and our broad thrusts will be.” After that, Senate committees will get to work, Schumer said, noting that some are farther along than others. 

Schumer said they are “not going to wait to have one huge comprehensive plan that touches on everything,” pointing instead to efforts like Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) work on AI and deepfakes in elections, which he said is “almost ready to go.” He added later that he hopes the Senate will start having legislation come out within a few weeks and through the fall.

“Some of them will come out sooner, some of them will come out later, but you will see different committees taking our roadmap and translating that, concretizing that into legislation,” Schumer said. 

He also said they’re trying to work in sync with the House, which launched its own bipartisan working group for AI earlier this year. “Hopefully some things can get done — not everything, maybe not most — but by the end of the year,” Schumer said.

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The Secure AI Act of 2024, introduced by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology to update the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to update the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) program, or create a new process, according to a summary of the bill. 

Additionally, the bill would charge the National Security Agency with establishing an AI Security Center that would provide an AI test-bed for research for private-sector and academic researchers, and develop guidance to prevent or mitigate “counter AI-techniques.”

“Safeguarding organizations from cybersecurity risks involving AI requires collaboration and innovation from both the private and public sector,” Tillis said in a press release. “This commonsense legislation creates a voluntary database for reporting AI security and safety incidents and promotes best practices to mitigate AI risks.” 

Under the legislation, CISA and NIST would have one year to develop and implement a voluntary database for tracking AI security and safety incidents, which would be available to the public. 

Similarly, NIST would only have 30 days after the enactment of this legislation to initiate a “multi-stakeholder process” to evaluate if the consensus standards for vulnerability reporting accommodate AI security vulnerabilities. After establishing this process, NIST would have 180 days to submit a report to Congress about the sufficiency of reporting processes. 

“By ensuring that public-private communications remain open and up-to-date on current threats facing our industry, we are taking the necessary steps to safeguard against this new generation of threats facing our infrastructure,” Warner said in the press release.

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Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, is expected in the coming weeks to introduce the legislation with a series of bills related to relevant AI issues like deepfakes, jobs and training, algorithmic bias, digital privacy, national security, and AI innovation and competitiveness, according to Cantwell’s staff and four sources familiar with the legislative effort.

The comprehensive series of AI bills has the support and blessing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who has tapped multiple Senate committee chairs to lead on introducing and debating major AI legislation after the culmination of his bipartisan AI Insight Forums last year, three sources familiar with the legislative effort told FedScoop.  

“The AI bills won’t come out all at the same time; they’ll be dropped in a series, in a staggered fashion, but we’re aiming for the next few weeks and months as soon as possible,” a senior legislative aide for the Senate Commerce Committee majority staff told FedScoop. “It’s a top priority for the senator especially because other countries and the U.S. need to be ahead on AI policy and AI competitiveness.

“Senate Commerce has the primary or at least very important jurisdiction on AI policy and a majority of AI policy is already coming out of our committee. Many bills have been referred to us, so we want to build upon that and work with Republicans to put out something that can move,” the senior aide added.

Cantwell announced at various points in 2023 that she’s working on introducing AI-related bills, including legislation on threats posed by deepfakes, a federal privacy bill targeting AI discrimination, a reskilling “GI bill” for AI, as well as legislation on potential disruptions to jobs and education posed by AI. 

She has yet to actually introduce any AI legislation, but has made it a priority for herself and the Senate Commerce Committee in the next few months. 

Two AI scholars familiar with legislative efforts in Congress told FedScoop that they expect Cantwell’s comprehensive AI legislation to start with the introduction of bills that focus on a few areas of shared bipartisan interest.

“The low-lying fruits are AI bills related to deepfakes in a narrow fashion, AI research and development, consumer fraud, and workers displaced by AI,” said Samuel Hammond, a senior economist focused on AI policy at the Foundation for American Innovation, a tech-focused, libertarian-leaning think tank previously known as the Lincoln Network.

“The vibes are there is some agreement but nothing that’s clearly going to go all the way,” Hammond added. “It wouldn’t surprise me given this is the Commerce Committee that Cantwell uses the bills to follow up on the CHIPS and Science Act, to get the most bang for their buck.”

Daniel Colson, the founder and executive director of the AI Policy Institute, said that he expects Cantwell’s series of comprehensive AI bills to focus first on bias and discrimination caused by AI, followed by legislation to address the most displaced workers, like language translators. There could also be bills to regulate the most extreme risks that large AI models that cost $10 billion or more could bring, he said. 

Three AI scholars familiar with Cantwell’s AI legislative efforts said the legislation could include a spending package related to AI policymaking between $8 billion and $10 billion.

Gathering bipartisan momentum for any major AI legislative effort has proven challenging, given the chasm between Democrats and Republicans in Congress and within the Senate Commerce Committee in particular. 

“Republican Commerce Committee staff said at a meeting with some of us recently that ‘we’re just going to hold the line’ on all AI-related legislation,” a senior AI scholar who met with Senate Republican Commerce staffers at the end of 2023 told FedScoop. The source added that Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republican members appear to favor Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s anti-regulation stance, and have expressed aversion toward doing “anything on AI proactively in contrast to the Democrats.”  

Some AI experts plugged into the legislative efforts on Capitol Hill who participated in Schumer’s bipartisan AI Insight Forums would like to see Cantwell’s comprehensive bills focus on a narrow set of key issues where there has already been agreement within both major parties.

“I think if we pursue the path of bipartisanship, we should be focused on, how do we stay ahead when it comes to AI and the investments needed?” Ylli Bajraktari, CEO of the nonprofit Special Competitive Studies Project, told FedScoop.

Bajraktari said that if the bills contain too many requests for more government spending, “then you’ll have these cracks of people defecting. But if the bill maintains focus on our national security, staying ahead in innovation, and the U.S. continuing to lead, then I think that increases the chances that comprehensive bills will be bipartisan and passable.”

Paul Lekas, senior vice president for global public policy & government affairs at the Software & Information Industry Association, which represents major tech players including Adobe, Apple and Google, said it’s important that future legislative efforts follow “the bipartisan spirit” of Schumer’s AI Insight Forums. 

“It should promote and incentivize safe and trustworthy AI, mitigate potential harms to rights and safety, while allowing for continued innovation,” Lekas told FedScoop. “We encourage Congress to pass legislation establishing a nationwide standard for AI that advances public trust in the digital ecosystem, consumer confidence in AI tools, continued innovation, and U.S. competitiveness. And it should begin that effort by passing a comprehensive federal privacy bill, because AI is only as good and reliable as the data that goes into it.”

Editor’s note 1/11/2024 at 4:50 p.m.: This story was updated to reflect the rebranding of the Lincoln Network to the Foundation for American Innovation.

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After his last closed-door, bipartisan AI insight forum, the New York Democrat said in a press conference that China is the only country that “would compete with the U.S.” on AI. Schumer’s forum, which covered national security specifically, followed an earlier session Wednesday about “Doomsday Scenarios,” per an email sent to reporters. 

The White House’s long-awaited AI executive order calls on the Department of Defense and all non-DOD federal agencies to play a part in protecting national security in the race to innovate. 

“U.S. leadership on AI gives us a competitive advantage that can greatly benefit the deployment of AI to strengthen our national security,” Schumer said. “AI and national security are very important together. … In order to maintain U.S. leadership in AI, we must provide robust investments to grow the AI industry, including more funding for research, development and procurement of AI technologies.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., pointed to the Department of Energy to share how non-DOD agencies are able to play a role in national security, highlighting the DOE’s work on nuclear weapons systems “in terms of creation.” 

“When you’re talking about AI, they have real capabilities at our laboratories that can be utilized for our defensive purposes as well,” Rounds said. “There is a coordination between” DOE and the DOD.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., meanwhile, said that Biden administration policies on digital trade deals with other countries are inhibiting the development of models of “green, next-generation technology,” as well as the ability to interoperate with partners and allies, which could “undermine national security.”

“Once we operate domestically,” Young said, “we’re gonna have to empower our diplomats … to sit down with other diplomats and the leaders of AI companies in the Western world so that we can harmonize regulations across other countries.”

Jack Shanahan, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security Technology and retired Air Force lieutenant general who spoke at the forum, said in an interview with FedScoop that there is an opportunity for federal agencies to have a stake in protecting national security via their AI use. 

With agencies like the Department of Commerce playing a “massively important role” at the center of the AI space, Shanahan said that the AI executive order “is the way to coalesce the federal government around such an important topic.”

Non-DOD agencies are  “going to have to get moving,” Shanahan said. “What I’d like to see and hope is going to be the case, they can learn from DOD, they can learn from maybe some of the intel agencies, they can learn from places like the U.S. digital service, but they’re also going to have things that are unique to their organization.”

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At the hearing, lawmakers pointed to the significant role the DOE plays in researching artificial intelligence — and expressed concerns over U.S. progress on AI, including efforts to protect research and build a domestic AI workforce. At one point, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, even instructed ChatGPT to write a poem about Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., to illustrate the power of the technology. 

“AI is already changing the world at a remarkable pace. We’re seeing it deployed in battlefields across the world. Ukraine has successfully used AI-enabled drone swarms against the Russian forces,” said Manchin at the hearing’s opening. “But make no mistake: artificial intelligence also presents many risks.”

Speakers at the hearing included Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk; Rick Stevens, Argonne National Laboratory’s associate laboratory director for computing, environment and life sciences, Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology senior fellow Anna Puglisi; and Andrew Wheeler, Hewlett Packard Labs fellow and vice president.

Several topics came up in the hearing, including U.S. competitiveness with China, the threat of misinformation, the state of American supercomputers, and the prospect of using AI to combat natural disasters, including wildfires.

The issue of watermarking — a method of denoting material that’s created with the help of AI — was also discussed, though Stevens, from Argonne, noted that there were rogue players and AI developers outside the United States wouldn’t be bound by American laws ordering companies to institute the practice. 

Notably, the Department of Energy recently released its updated AI inventory, a list of AI use cases that the agency is using or plans to deploy. Many of these use cases from the work being done at national laboratories. 

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Ernst on Tuesday sent letters to the inspectors general across major federal departments and agencies asking them to investigate how telework has impacted service delivery and resulted in wasted taxpayer dollars as office space at federal buildings goes unused.

On top of that, Ernst said she would like to know worksite attendance rates at each agency and if steps have been taken “to adjust bureaucrats’ location-based salaries for those who have relocated and chosen to remain out of the office.”

“Growing up on a farm, I know what working from home actually means,” Ernst said in a release. “It’s not fair to let the responsibilities of running an agency—and the country—fall on the shoulders of the hardworking public servants who are showing up while others are out golfing on the taxpayer’s dime. Frustrated Americans are being put on hold while too many federal employees are phoning it in. I’m calling out federal employees who refuse to answer the call of duty to return to work on behalf of taxpayers, veterans, seniors, and our great nation. It’s time to get back to work.”

In her letters to the IGs, Ernst references older investigations into telework at the Patent and Trademark Office — a pre-pandemic telework-friendly agency — that found widespread abuses of the system.

She also cites some viral examples of more recent abuses, like when a manager responsible for helping veterans schedule appointments at the Atlanta VA Medical Center posted a photo on social media of himself working while taking a bubble bath. Meanwhile, the wait times for veterans to get an appointment at the Atlanta medical center are some of the worst in the country, Ernst claims, and “one such veteran temporarily lost his eyesight while waiting six months for an appointment with an eye doctor at the Atlanta VA,” she wrote in her letters.

“It appears hybrid and remote working is now standard practice for the federal workforce,” she wrote. “So, it is imperative for taxpayers and those being served by federal programs that costs and outcomes are not negatively impacted by the arrangement. The examples of telework abuses cited in this letter, after all, were caught thanks to dedicated civil servants who spoke up rather than effective management by the agency or OPM.”

Ernst goes on to request the IGs provide her with answers to a dozen detailed questions on their agency’s specific telework operations.

Earlier this month, House Republican lawmakers chided federal leaders for failing to turn over materials related to telework and remote work policies that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee requested as part of a separate investigation into federal agency telework policies and their effect on agency performance.

Just prior to that, President Biden called for his Cabinet to “aggressively execute” plans for federal employees to carry out more in-office work this fall.

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The Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI) in a missive called for lawmakers to adopt language that would provide $100 million for the governmentwide technology working capital fund.

“Earlier this year, the Administration requested $300 million in its FY 2023 budget request. ADI notes that the House mark includes $100 million for the TMF while the Senate bill does not include additional funding,” says the letter addressed to leaders of the Senate and House appropriations committees. It’s referring to the funding the Biden administration requested for the TMF in its budget request for fiscal 2023.

ADI leaders added: “[G]iven the number of outstanding TMF proposals — 130 proposals from 60 agencies and components totaling over $2.5 billion, according to the director of the TMF program management office — we strongly urge the adoption of the House mark of $100 million in FY 2023.”

Democrats and Republicans are edging towards agreement on a roughly $1 trillion “omnibus” spending bill that would bundle 12 appropriations bills to provide governmentwide funding through the remainder of fiscal 2023.

“With this additional funding, ADI supports Congress’ efforts to provide additional oversight of the fund and the specific projects that are awarded,” the group added. “ADI believes that the priorities of the various agencies should align with the efforts of the administration and Congress to improve both the customer experience of citizen services and cybersecurity of the agencies.”

The Technology Modernization Fund received $1 billion for projects as part of the American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law by President Biden in March 2021.

The House version of the spending bill in its current form also funds the Federal Citizen Services Fund and supports cybersecurity improvements across government.

Both the House and Senate versions of the spending bill would provide CISA with $2.9 billion to carry out its objectives.

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