Congress tries to figure out how to keep the US ahead of China in race for AI development

WASHINGTON (TNND) — Leaders of the country’s largest artificial intelligence companies met with lawmakers on Thursday as Congress debates how to preserve the United States’ position as a global leader in the industry in a fierce competition with China that could have outsized stakes on the future of the global economy.

Developing AI and creating guardrails for the industry to operate under has been a high-profile priority for Congress over the last two years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT burst onto the scene and led a swift uptick of AI usage by the public and companies. But figuring out exactly what protections should become law and how to preserve the United States’ position as a global leader of the technology has been a trickier proposition.

Several leaders of the industry were in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to testify on the future of the industry, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Michael Intrator, CEO of CoreWeave.

Safety fears are one of the biggest issues facing the advancement of AI and expanding its uses across the economy, prompting the government to pile pressure on companies to take those concerns seriously. Most of the biggest developers have laid out plans to install safety guidelines or signed onto agreements promising to avoid some of the most dire scenarios from playing out.

The U.S. is facing fierce competition from China to get to the forefront of AI development in what has become a leading national security issue for the country to grapple with and led to bans on advanced chips and other technology from being exported there. How wide the lead America has over China is unclear but the release of DeepSeek earlier this year rattled Wall Street and Silicon Valley with claims that its model was able to nearly replicate well-funded American companies for pennies on the dollar.

“We need to move fast because if we don't, we are looking at another Huawei, another instance where the United States is behind, and also saying we should tear out this system that now we don't like for lots of reasons, and back door policies,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

While lawmakers have been pushing to create some set of regulations for AI developers to operate under, they have also been cautious about going too far and losing the United States’ place as a global leader.

“The United States is facing a fork in the road. Do we go down the path that embraces our history of entrepreneurial freedom and technological innovation, or do we adopt the command-and-control policies of Europe?” said Sen. Ted Cruz, D-Texas.

Smith told lawmakers the industry needs more innovation from partnerships with academic researchers, faster permitting to expand energy production and quicker adaption of the tech by America’s workforce.

Another challenge facing the industry’s future is how to develop the necessary infrastructure to support the technology’s massive demands for energy and data storage. Expanding electricity production has been at the forefront of the issues lawmakers are facing in helping the United States’ AI industry continue to boom.

Continued development of AI will require specialized computer chips, vast amounts of data to train models, a more skilled workforce and huge supplies on energy.

A report last month from the International Energy Agency estimated the electricity demand from data centers that power AI tools will more than double by 2030 to 945 terawatt-hours, more energy than the entire consumption of Japan.

“I believe the next decade will be about abundant intelligence and abundant energy — making sure that those, that America leads in both of those — that we are able to usher in these dual revolutions that will change the world we live in, I think, in incredibly positive ways, is critical,” Altman said.