▶ 0:13:23Chair Cruz: Good morning. Welcome to the witnesses. Thank you for joining us this morning. In the last two years ai has brought united states and the world to a critical inflection point. Ai may be a technology as transformative as the internet. Even more so.
▶ 0:13:47Chair Cruz: It has unleashed a global revolution with the potential to unlock opportunities that improve our quality of life, create jobs, and stimulate economic growth. The country that leads in ai will shape the 21st century global order. As a matter of economic security, as a matter of national security, america has to beat china in the ai grace.
▶ 0:14:20Chair Cruz: -- race. China has made ai central to the national strategy and leads to aim the world in ai by 2030, investing heavily in ai adoption across injuries like manufacturing -- industries like manufacturing and defense. The united states is facing a fork in the road.
▶ 0:14:42Chair Cruz: 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? I would suggest that congress draw on the lessons we can learn from the dawn of the internet.
▶ 0:15:03Chair Cruz: In the early 1990's, washington embraced the internet and explicitly adopted a style of regulation that was intentionally and decisively light touch. Congress chose to deregulate under the telecommunications act of 1996. While president clinton pursued tariff agreements and treaties that protected america's intellectual property and technological exports.
▶ 0:15:36Chair Cruz: Further, in 1998, congress enacted a 10-year internet tax moratorium so that state laws would not stymie the promise of e-commerce. The results of these decisions were extraordinary. By 2000, the united states recorded five straight years of historic highs in productivity gains and investment growth.
▶ 0:16:05Chair Cruz: Hundreds of thousands of new jobs were created. United states became a top tech exporter with massive sums of private investment pouring into the digital economy. By contrast, eu countries pursued a series of heavy-handed regulations that proved enormously costly. In 1993, the united states and europe had economies virtually identical in size.
▶ 0:16:35Chair Cruz: Today the american economy is more than 50% larger than europe's. The drivers of that are tech and the shale revolution. Those two comprise virtually the entirety of that massive growth over europe.
▶ 0:16:57Chair Cruz: According to one eu commission report, only 6% of global ai startup funding flows to eu firms. 6%. That is 1/10 of the amount that is going to american companies. The report directly blames this yawning chasm on the eu's nasty regulatory approach.
▶ 0:17:23Chair Cruz: Yet the biden administration, for inextricable reasons, tried to align ai policy with the eu to adopt their failed policies. President biden's sweeping ai executive order, the longest executive order in american history, cast ai as dangerous and opaque, laying the groundwork for audits, risk assessments and regulatory certifications.
▶ 0:17:51Chair Cruz: Biden's approach inspired similar efforts in state legislatures across the country, threatening to burden startups, developers and ai users with heavy compliance costs. Some of my colleagues suggest a friendlier version of the biden approach makes sense.
▶ 0:18:10Chair Cruz: They want to they want ta testing regime against discrimination and have government agencies provide "guidance documents." seemingly something out of orwell. Level usher in what they call -- that will usher in with a call best practices. As if ai engineers lack the intelligence to responsibly build ai without the bureaucrats.
▶ 0:18:38Chair Cruz: Many in the industry foolishly have supported such terms. Harmful regulations take many forms. Biden's misguided ai diffusion rule on chips and model weights would have crippled american tech companies' ability to sell ai to the world. Divide and plan would've handed over key markets to china -- the biden plan would have handed over key markets to china.
▶ 0:19:08Chair Cruz: We want allies to buy american and vocally oppose the rule for months. The ranking member and I together urged the biden administration not to adopt it. I'm very pleased that president trump has now confirmed he plans to resend it.
▶ 0:19:29Chair Cruz: All this bureaucracy and regulator approved guidance documents is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Delete in -- two lead in ai -- to lead in ai we cannot choke innovation or adoption. American dominance in ai depends on two factors. Innovation and adoption.
▶ 0:20:00Chair Cruz: Innovation drives breakthroughs in global competitiveness. Adoption ensures these tools empower american workers and businesses, enabling the united states to become the world's leading adapter and exporter of ai. Thankfully president trump has largely reversed biden's misguided ai agenda.
▶ 0:20:21Chair Cruz: In fact, I think ai was a sleeper issue in this last election as americans wanted to see president trump and republicans and all senators champion ai policies focused on innovation and adoption. The contrast has been astounding.
▶ 0:20:42Chair Cruz: This year there have been over $1 trillion of new ai projects, including major investments in texas like the coreweave in plano and the project stargate in abilene by openai and oracle and others. Adopting a light touch regulatory style for ai but require congress to work alongside the president, just as congress did with president clinton.
▶ 0:21:11Chair Cruz: We need to advance legislation that promotes long-term ai growth and innovation. That is why I will soon release a new bill that creates a regulatory sandbox for ai. Modeled on the approach taken by congress and president clinton at the dawn of the internet that will remove barriers to ai adoption, prevent needless state overregulation, and allow the ai supply chain to rapidly grow in the united states.
▶ 0:21:43Chair Cruz: That is how we will accelerate economic growth, secure U.S. dominance in ai, and be china. -- beat china. I turned to the ranking member.
▶ 0:21:53Sen. Cantwell: Thank you for this hearing and welcome to the witnesses. Mr. atman, Dr. su, Mr. intrator and Mr. smith. It's a pleasure to have all of you here. It's a prideful moment for the pacific northwest to have Mr. smith and Mr. altman here representing an openai.
▶ 0:22:14Sen. Cantwell: I mean an approach where we want to win against china in a closed system by making sure what is developed in the united states and around the globe is an architecture where the united states wins. To do that we need to focus on computing power, algorithms, and on robust data sources. All of that will be key.
▶ 0:22:45Sen. Cantwell: Personally, I believe continued investment in nsf helps in those areas as a good public-private partnership with the industry represented here today. I'm surprised we passed the chips and science act. The chips and science act set the foundation for investing in the united states of america and bringing more of the supply chain back to the united states of america to build on a future leadership we already have in the computing power.
▶ 0:23:15Sen. Cantwell: We also need to understand we have to move forward on the chips act, like the university of washington $10 million grant on multi-design sets, the large-scale integrated design that Dr. su will tell us about today.
▶ 0:23:34Sen. Cantwell: The fact that the united states has to continue to lead on the future designs in the limitation requires us to be very smart about data centers, about sources of electricity, and how we will build that supply that could be up to 12% of electricity demand in the near future. How do we do that? I noticed in your testimonies you have all explained this.
▶ 0:24:01Sen. Cantwell: I'm also proud that microsoft has already signed the agreement with one company, fusion energy, in everett, washington, for a power source of flight. Maybe Mr. altman will talk about this. They hope to get near future energy source from that. Clearly the united states leading on electricity and development. Mr.
▶ 0:24:29Sen. Cantwell: Smith, appreciated the accentuation on the fact the united states of america needs hundreds of thousands of new electricians. Something we should all want to get behind. The fact that having electricity and the electricians and the data source centers in the united states and other places will be key.
▶ 0:24:54Sen. Cantwell: While I want to see us move forward, as the chairman said, we signed a letter saying we needed a broader support for export controls. I want to be clear. Export controls are not a trade strategy. They are not a back pocket issue that the president of the united states whips out in trade negotiations. We are going to move fast because we are going to set standards.
▶ 0:25:21Sen. Cantwell: I believe the standards should be encouraging very broad distribution of U.S. manufactured and made ai chips and technology and that we are asking our partners overseas to comply with the rules we established. Things like making sure there is no circumvention of the supply that somehow gets into china's and. Making -- hands.
▶ 0:25:52Sen. Cantwell: Making sure we can verify. Making sure U.S. data companies and cloud-based companies are allowed to be in that market. We should not be going to markets overseas only to have them tell us organizations and cloud services from the U.S. would not be allowed. This I believe would be a robust initiative on getting U.S. ai chips and U.S.
▶ 0:26:18Sen. Cantwell: Ai open systems dominated around the globe. Why do we need to move fast? 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. I am all for winning. That is what we passed the chips and science act.
▶ 0:26:49Sen. Cantwell: I'm all for winning and that's what we passed seven bills out of this committee last year that kind of got stuck in the lame-duck. I think it chairman of the committee was not ready to move forward in negotiations with the house and senate on those bills.
▶ 0:27:05Sen. Cantwell: Those bills on the institute for standards, which I think we need to do -- my colleague and I on education and scholarship,s small business -- scholarships, small business, and the build of my colleagues here which was also related to standards. We had an opportunity to move fast. We did not do it. Let's do this now.
▶ 0:27:35Sen. Cantwell: Let's get together and figure this out. The faster the united states moves now -- I like this great paul romer quote about collaboration is the next phase of innovation. If we don't collaborate here, if we throw down on politics instead of getting the policy right, we won't move fast. Let's allow these people to do what they do best and let's make sure the united states has the right policies in place so are open ai standard wins the day.
▶ 0:28:07Sen. Cantwell: Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:28:08Chair Cruz: Thank you. I would like to interview sir witnesses for today. Each witness and the companies represent critical parts of the ai infrastructure,, hardware and software supply chain. The first witness is sam altman, the cofounder and ceo of openai. Openai is one of the world's most advanced ai companies known best for its chatgpt product. Our second witness is lisa su, chair and ceo of advanced micro devices, amd.
▶ 0:28:39Chair Cruz: Amd develops high-performance processes -- processors and accelerators that power artificial intelligence. Dr. su is also a texan. The third witness today is michael intrator, ceo and cofounder of coreweave, an ai hyperscaler. Coreweave is the world's largest ai cloud platform. The final witnesses brad smith, vice chair and president of microsoft.
▶ 0:29:09Chair Cruz: I believe everyone is familiar with that company. Mr. altman, you are recognized. If you can turn on the volume. I do enjoy telling techies how to operate the tech.
▶ 0:29:27Mr. Altman: Pretty embarrassing I cannot figure that out. Thank you, chairman. Thank you senators and fellow panelists. It's an honor to be here. I was here about two years ago. Chatgpt was not even launched. It was a curiosity in the world. People were not sure what it was going to be used for. Today we have made some progress. Chatgpt is used by more than 5 million people week.
▶ 0:29:53Mr. Altman: According to some, it is now the fifth biggest website on the internet globally and growing quickly. It is increasing productivity. Scientists say they are two to three times unproductive. People are getting medical advice or learning in ways they could not before. It is no longer this thing that was going to come in the future. It is here now. People are really using it.
▶ 0:30:21Mr. Altman: We are proud to be one of the leaders of this. We are proud america is leading in ai significantly. I think that is critical. What senator cruz said about the importance of innovation in america, we have the -- what happened with the internet is happening again. I think this'll be at least as big as the internet, perhaps bigger. Investment in infrastructure is critical. The next decade will be about quantum intelligence andnergy.
▶ 0:30:51Mr. Altman: Making sure those -- america leads in both of those. That we can usher in these dual revolutions that will change the world and world a and credit we positive ways. I went to abilene, texas yesterday. We are building the largest facility in the world. We need a lot more that. There's a whole ai factory, like a supply chain of energy chips and data centers and more.
▶ 0:31:20Mr. Altman: We have to do that well in the U.S. so we can continue to innovate and lead and shape this revolution. Speaking of that, I was inspired by what chairman cruz said. I would like to deviate from the script here and tell a story from my prepared written testimony. I covered the basics. If it's ok, I would love to tell you that story. I grew up in st. Louis and I was a computer nerd. It was the time of the internet boom and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
▶ 0:31:50Mr. Altman: We lived in this beautiful brick house in a suburb of st. Louis. I lived in the attic and I had a computer and I would stay up all night and program. I got to use the internet and I was like -- it was a crazy time of innovation. It was amazing. It was all happening here. All the internet companies were in the U.S. I used a mac that was built here near where I now live. I learned about computers. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
▶ 0:32:20Mr. Altman: I can draw a straight line from that experience to founding openai and getting to work on companies. This. Of american innovation -- the spirit of american innovation and entrepreneurship, I don't think the internet could have happened anywhere else. I don't think the ai would have happened here. I'm a child of the internet revolution. I had the honor to be one of the parents of the ai revolution. It is no accident that happened in america.
▶ 0:32:51Mr. Altman: We need to make sure we build our systems and we set our policies in a way where that continues to happen. I think this is magic. I don't want to live in europe either. I think america is just an incredible and special thing. It will not only be the place for the ai revolution happens, but all the revolutions after. I was home recently and drove by our old house. I looked up in the top floor window. The light was on.
▶ 0:33:22Mr. Altman: Hopefully there is some kid in there playing with chatgpt and figuring out how they will start a company of what comes next. Double happen here too. That is the magic of this country. I hope it keeps going. Thank you very much.
▶ 0:33:38Chair Cruz: Thank you. Dr. su.
▶ 0:33:41Dr. Su: Chairman cruz, ranking member cantwell, members of the committee, it's an honor to be here on such an important topic. I'm the chair and ceo of amd, a U.S. semiconductor company founded 56 years ago. We build high-performance computing chips for the modern economy. Everyday billions of people rely on our products and services powered by our technologies.
▶ 0:34:06Dr. Su: Our chips are extreme important to support the critical missions, including powering defense systems and security medications, and enabling ray through scientific research. -- breakthrough scientific research. Our proudest moments are we see amazing public-private partnerships. Our work in supercomputing is an example of that. For more than a decade of partnerships with the department of energy, amd powers the two fastest supercomputers in the world.
▶ 0:34:33Dr. Su: One that is housed at oak ridge national labs put in the place in 2021. The other at lawrence livermore national labs that was just recently put into commission late last year. The systems are critical for the national infrastructure standpoint to solve many large research issues and national security and scientific leadership. In terms of ai, there is so much that has been stated.
▶ 0:35:01Dr. Su: I want to thank chairman cruz and ricky never cantwell for having this hearing -- ranking member cantwell for having this hearing. It's an important how we -- to talk about how we win. United states leads today but I would like to say that it's a race. Leadership is absolutely not guaranteed. It's a global race that will shape the outcome of national security and economic prosperity for many decades to come.
▶ 0:35:29Dr. Su: Maintaining our lead requires excellence at every layer. I'm honored to be here with my panelist as well. We have deep partnerships with microsoft and openai that demonstrate how you need silicon, software, systems, and the application layer to be successful. In terms of what to do, I thought about the most important things to say today. I put them in five categories. I think the first and probably the foremost is we must continue to run faster.
▶ 0:36:00Dr. Su: This is a race. The race does not stand still. Nobody stands still. We lead today because of the bold decisions that we made and because of the innovation economy we have. We need to continue to run faster. That means ensuring we have computing available.
▶ 0:36:18Dr. Su: Sam's story about abilene is an excellent example of how when you allow the computing infrastructure to expand at the rate and pace the private sector once you make a tremendous -- wants, you make tremendous progress. I want to talk about open ecosystems. They are a cornerstone of U.S. leadership. That allows ideas to come from everywhere and every part of the innovation cycle.
▶ 0:36:45Dr. Su: Reducing barriers to entry and strengthening security, as well as creating a competitive marketplace for ideas. Third, we are happy to see the focus on a robust domestic supply chain. For us, we used to not get so much attention. Now we get a lot of attention thanks to the importance of chips. The fact is we need more manufacturing in the U.S. the effort so far has made a good progress but there's a lot more that can be done.
▶ 0:37:15Dr. Su: That should be done in public and private partnership. We must invest in talent. The net estates should be the best place to study ai, work in ai, really move the innovations we need. Again, this can also be done in significant public-private partnership. Fifth, in the area of export controls we must -- we understand as an industry the importance of national security. That is without saying as a U.S.
▶ 0:37:47Dr. Su: Company. We also want to ensure, as chairman cruz and ranking member cantwell stated, it's important to have widespread adoption of U.S. technologies. We lead today because we have the best technology. If we are not able to fully have our technology adopted, they will be other technologies that will come into play that might not be as good as we are today but frankly usage really spurs innovation.
▶ 0:38:17Dr. Su: This is something we certainly need to work with in public-private partnership. I would end by saying, like sam, I had a computer when I was growing up. I group in new york. I'm a little older than sam so my first computer was a commodore 64. Then I graduated to the apple ii . This is the best place to do computing innovation in the world. We wanted to stay that way with a very rich and broad ecosystem.
▶ 0:38:47Dr. Su: Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
▶ 0:38:49Chair Cruz: I had an apple ii with a shoe box of floppy disks and I took a wrong turn and ended up in politics instead. Mr. intrator.
▶ 0:38:59Mr. Intrator: I started out with the 20. Distinguish members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I'm honored to appear alongside my industry colleagues and partners. My name is michael intrator, cofounder and ceo of coreweave counted seven years ago.
▶ 0:39:21Mr. Intrator: Coreweave started like many adventures humbly in a garage experiment thing with graphics processing and gps for cryptocurrency. Recognizing the transformation to support powerful ai applications dramatically scaling envision -- in vision and operation, we stand at the forefront of america's ai infrastructure revolution, operating more than 30 data centers across 15 states.
▶ 0:39:51Mr. Intrator: We manage more than 250,000 gp use, using -- gpus. Our revenue has surged by 12,000% in two years, reaching $1.9 billion in 2024. Coreweave became a publicly traded company on march 28.
▶ 0:40:15Mr. Intrator: The rapid growth is a testimony not only to the technology but also to the surging global demand for advanced ai infrastructure. It enables american businesses to rapidly translate ai aspirations into impactful economic realities by empowering companies to accelerate innovation.
▶ 0:40:39Mr. Intrator: We are fueling america's competitive edge 12 improving productivity -- while improving activity. Purpose built computing capabilities surpass traditional cloud computing in scale and performance. Today's general-purpose cloud that was built to support and scale the complexity of ai workloads. We cannot run the 21st century economy on 20th century infrastructure.
▶ 0:41:04Mr. Intrator: Ai workloads involve trillions of simultaneous calculations, demanding unprecedented computing power, advanced cooling systems, cutting-edge chip technology, ultra high-speed networks and accelerated storage. Since 2018, computing power necessary for advanced ai models has multiplied the proximally 100,000 fold. At coreweave, our facility symbolize america's great tradition of innovation.
▶ 0:41:33Mr. Intrator: Our data centers are staffed by skilled american workers and embody how modern technology not only stimulates economic growth and enhances national security, but improves human lives. We are at a critical juncture in the global ai competition. The nation that leads infrastructure will set the global economic agenda and shape human outcomes for decades.
▶ 0:41:57Mr. Intrator: Our largest competitor, china, recognizes the stakes and is spending significant resources to strengthen their position. I want to focus on four elements of policy that will help determine whether the U.S. secures its leadership role in the ai world. First, strategic investment stability. Ai instructor -- infrastructure is capital-intensive and requires coronation across stakeholders.
▶ 0:42:25Mr. Intrator: , stable predictable policy frameworks, secure supply chains, and regulatory environment that foster innovation are crucial. Policymakers must provide clear and consistent policy and regulations across all jurisdictions that enables long-term investment and rapid scaling of ai technology. Second, energy infrastructure. To support the rapid deployment of ai infrastructure america must ensure abundant and affordable supplies of energy.
▶ 0:42:55Mr. Intrator: Careful reforms and permitting and regular through processes are next seri to his facilitate more rapid construction, interconnections, and energy for data centers. Third is global market access. Maintaining america's leadership also means ensuring our technologies have rear access to global markets. Export controls and trade agreements can be calibrated to address national security risks and support global diffusion of american ai technology.
▶ 0:43:26Mr. Intrator: Finally, public-private partnerships and workforce of element. America's unique advantage in the ai base is enhanced by our powerful tradition of public-private partnerships. Coreweave is practical we the new jersey ai hub with microsoft, princeton university, and the new jersey economic development leadership. Initiatives like this develop critical work skills, foster innovation and ensure economic -- economies and communities are prepared for the future.
▶ 0:43:56Mr. Intrator: America stands ready to lead the ai revolution was a bring in numerous benefits. It is a rare moment in time and we must meet it. If government, industry and all parties were together the united can win the race and sees the vast opportunity ahead of us. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to answering your questions.
▶ 0:44:16Chair Cruz: Mr. smith.
▶ 0:44:17Mr. Smith: Chairman cruz, ranking never cantwell, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Let me build on what my three colleagues have said and offer a few thoughts. The first is I want to refer to the chart on the easel that shows the ai tech stack that was in my written testimony. It makes a simple but important point. We are all in this together. If the united states is going to succeed in leading the world in ai,.
▶ 0:44:49Mr. Smith: Requires infrastructure, -- it requires infrastructure, success of the platform level, people that create applications. Microsoft gives the work with all three of these leaders in the company's. Our success, each of our success depends on each other's success.
▶ 0:45:09Mr. Smith: What is true of the four of us is true when you look across the country and around the world for open source developers, people that are building power plants, electricians and pipefitters who are going to work every single day. What do we need from the congress and the country to succeed? It is three things. I will describe them in my written testimony. As chairman cruz said, we need innovation.
▶ 0:45:37Mr. Smith: Innovation will go faster, innovation will go faster with more infrastructure, faster permitting, more electricians. We need more innovation fuel, as ranking never camel said -- ranking member cantwell said by support of research across this country. We also need faster adoption. What people refer to as ai diffusion.
▶ 0:46:05Mr. Smith: The ability to put ai to work across every part of the american economy, to boost productivity, to boost economic growth, to enable people to innovate in their work. The number one ingredient for that, history shows time and time again, is scaling, investing in education. We need to export. If america will lead the world we need to connect with the world.
▶ 0:46:31Mr. Smith: We need to remember -- I believe always -- that as a country only 4.5% of the world's people live in the united states of america. Our global leadership relies on our ability to serve the world with the right approach to export controls and always, especially in technology, and our ability to sustain the trust of the rest of the world.
▶ 0:46:56Mr. Smith: I think people who take the time, if they take the time, to watch or read about this hearing may wonder what is this all about. What are we at this table trying to do? What do these letters ai really mean to them? Are we who are working in this industry trying to build machines that are better than people? Are we trying to build machines that will help people become better?
▶ 0:47:36Mr. Smith: . It is and needs to be the latter are we trying to build machines that will outperform people in all the jobs that they do today? Are we trying to build machines that will help people pursue better jobs and even more interesting careers in the future? Indisputably it needs to be the second, not the first. I believe that is what we are and can do together. As somebody who is now spent almost 32 years in this industry, there are two things that always strike me. The first probably will not surprise you.
▶ 0:48:06Mr. Smith: Never underestimate what technology can do. How quickly it can move. What it can accomplish. But the second is one that I think is too seldom discussed even though it stares us in the face. Never estimate what people can do. Never underestimate human ambition.
▶ 0:48:27Mr. Smith: Never under estimate -- underestimate what a person can do if given a better technology tool and the ability to learn how to put it to use. That is the story of this industry. It is the story of the country. It is the story of sam altman. Not everybody becomes a sam altman or a satya nadella or bill gates. Everybody deserves the opportunity to try.
▶ 0:48:55Mr. Smith: Tonight across america, whether it is the attic of a house or the basement or just an everyday bedroom there are kids with computers, with phones, with access to the internet. Now the ability to put ai to work. Let's invest in their education. Let's invest in the skills the american public needs. Let's then invest in creating the future that the mac in public deserves. Thank you -- the american public deserves.
▶ 0:49:26Mr. Smith: Thank you. >> thank you for your testimony. I will start with the first round of questions and then I will ask the ranking member. Thank you for your testimony. It makes me sleep better at night knowing that you guys are behind the wheel. In five words or less, Mr. smith, what are the first -- five words you need to see from our government to make sure we win the ai race?
▶ 0:49:56Mr. Smith: More electricians. That is t words -- two words. Broader ai application.
▶ 0:50:13Mr. Intrator: I would say we need to focus on streamlining the ability to build large things.
▶ 0:50:22Dr. Su: Policies to help us run faster in the innovation race.
▶ 0:50:28Mr. Altman: Allow supply chain sensible policy.
▶ 0:50:33Sen. Sheehy: That was good. What I hear is something pretty similar to the races we have one before. Nuclear energy for example. The germans and austrians led the innovation around that but we won the race because we put a massive government effort collaborating with universities and others to win the race. Space. The soviets put the first satellite up, the first man in space, but we won the race because we adopted the framework to ensure we won.
▶ 0:51:06Sen. Sheehy: Automobiles, aviation, etc. What I hear is that you do need support from our government but also need the government to stay out of your way so you can innovate and when the race -- win the race. How do we incentivize companies to do business here to make sure we win the race in america and america leads not just china but other nonstate actors? The scariest thing about ai from the capability standpoint as it doesn't have to be a state actor to win the race.
▶ 0:51:35Sen. Sheehy: It is not like nuclear or space technology. A nonstate actor can just as easily win the race and wield more power than anyone else. How do we encourage innovators' investment to happen here so we win the race?
▶ 0:51:51Mr. Altman: We were honored to announce project stargate, a billion dollar investment in the united states infrastructure. That is well underway. You can see it yesterday in abilene. We need more that. We need certainty on the ability to build out the entire supply chain, build the data centers, permit the electricity. We want to bring network production here. Server production here. I think the world is want to invest.
▶ 0:52:20Mr. Altman: We have a lot of global investment flowing into the U.S. to do this. We want to make sure other countries are able to build with our technology, user models, -- use our models and be in our orbit and use U.S. diffusion of technology. That's really important. We need to make sure the high skilled researchers that want to come work at U.S. companies can come here and you that. -- do that.
▶ 0:52:47Mr. Altman: We need to make sure companies like openai have legal clarity on how we are going to operate. Of course there needs to be guardrails. We need to be competitive globally. We need to train and be able to understand services and where the rules of the road are going to be. Clarity there.
▶ 0:53:08Mr. Altman: An approach like the internet which led to the floors of this country, we need that again -- the flourishment of this country.
▶ 0:53:21Dr. Su: We want more computer built in the U.S. by U.S. companies and ensure we have a great environment for that. We went to ensure our technology around the world is also used broadly and in the right ways. I think the conversation about export controls and rules should be simple, easy to follow, easy to enforce, and enable U.S. ai platforms to be the foundation.
▶ 0:53:48Dr. Su: The comments around bringing manufacturing back home and ensuring we have the right talent base are all the truly important elements.
▶ 0:53:56Sen. Sheehy: Our companies doing business in ai in america versus china? Are the companies making that side-by-side comparison?
▶ 0:54:05Dr. Su: If you look across the world there are countries and companies that will ask those questions. If it is hard to obtain U.S. technology -- although he was technology is the best, but it's of -- but if it's hard to obtain they will choose what is available. If china is available, there will be an outcome we would not like to see.
▶ 0:54:29Sen. Sheehy: I hear the words infrastructure, electricians, universities, regulatory framework. I think those are things we can help with. I hear words like innovation and talent and I hear Dr. su say run faster. Those are not things the government can manufacture. We cannot make you run faster but we can give you the tools to do that. It is time to create a framework so you have the tools you need to win the race. You will be the ones that when it, not us -- win it, not us.
▶ 0:54:59Sen. Cantwell: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I would like to continue that same thing about competitiveness. Do we need to set standards. We will go down the line.
▶ 0:55:12Mr. Altman: I don't think we need it but it will be helpful.
▶ 0:55:16Dr. Su: Yes.
▶ 0:55:18Mr. Intrator: Yes.
▶ 0:55:20Mr. Smith: Yes.
▶ 0:55:22Sen. Cantwell: In the context of what we are talking about here, we are talking -- I don't know, Mr. smith or Mr. intrator, Dr. su, if we want to move fast, we want to create like with electricity standards by which we want to move fast. Here I would call it code for code is what we want. We want this to do something and the standard-setting double allow us to move much faster.
▶ 0:55:53Sen. Cantwell: Is that right, Mr. smith or Mr. intrator?
▶ 0:55:57Mr. Smith: Nist is where standards go to be adopted but they are not created.
▶ 0:56:07Sen. Cantwell: Thank you for that clarity. Clear talking about an industry ieee, lots of organizations, industry input, and then they are adopted. Let's clarify that.
▶ 0:56:19Mr. Smith: I think that is the way it works.
▶ 0:56:22Sen. Cantwell: You think we need to do that if the united states wants to lead?
▶ 0:56:26Mr. Smith: We will need industry standards. We need american adoption of standards. You are right. We will need U.S. efforts to ensure the world buys into the standards.
▶ 0:56:38Sen. Cantwell: Mr. intrator';] -- Mr. intrator?
▶ 0:56:42Mr. Intrator: It's important when you're working with standards that allows for a common vocabulary for acceleration. To the extent we can step into that role and establish where everyone can -- establish touch points where everyone can agree on things, that will require acceleration domestically and abroad.
▶ 0:57:05Sen. Cantwell: I don't know if drilling down more on what you think those are, but in general when I think about the internet and http, html, the things allowed us to move faster. Getting those standards established help us do that. On the export issue, Mr. intrator, the issue of cloud sources should not be left out.
▶ 0:57:34Sen. Cantwell: If we say let's go with malaysia, it will tell us they can certify that there is no, you know, day version of these chips to asia, to china, and we basically have a way that we can make sure that this is understood and monitored then we also want access. We went taxes by U.S. companies. -- access by U.S. companies.
▶ 0:58:02Mr. Intrator: At the end of the day the world once to be able -- wants to be able to build and deploy artificial intelligence in a broad way. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not step into that role, other technology will step in that role. If it is suboptimal, so be it. It is better to have something so multiple that nothing.
▶ 0:58:34Mr. Intrator: -- that is suboptimal then nothing.
▶ 0:58:37Sen. Cantwell: We don't want war way -- huawei. I'm for the five most sophisticated society saying this is who you should buy from. A government backdoors not a good idea. That is how we get leverage. I'm not so hot on the president's tariff agenda for this reason. We are not building the alliances. We are creating the enemies.
▶ 0:59:05Sen. Cantwell: I want to get the supply chain here, get the semiconductor flow here, lower the cost and go as fast as we can.
▶ 0:59:11Mr. Intrator: Yeah. I agree with that. I don't think that is -- I don't think anybody will not agree with that. It's an excellent objective. I think what will happen beyond the five nato companies is there will be demand for artificial intelligence. They will proceed with what they can proceed with.
▶ 0:59:40Sen. Cantwell: Dr. su, we are more aggressive on the export strategy.
▶ 0:59:45Dr. Su: I think there is a clear recognition we need an export strategy. Having this conversation is very important. From our perspective, the idea is to ensure our allies and frankly I use that in the broadest sense get access to the great american technology we have with appropriate controls in place. I think you can do both. To your earlier comment about the need to have U.S.
▶ 1:00:14Dr. Su: Technologies in those countries, I think those countries are actually very interesting -- interested in that. We have the best technology today. Using that to build this broad ai ecosystem is our opportunity.
▶ 1:00:30Sen. Cantwell: I agree. Thank you so much.
▶ 1:00:32Sen. Sheehy: The senior senator from ohio. >> thank you, chairman sheehy. Make sure senator cruz heard that. Thank you for taking the time. If I can quickly confirm I have heard what you said unanimously. We need dramatically more power generation in this country. Is that correct? Dr.
▶ 1:01:00Sen. Sheehy: Su, you did a partnership with tsmc to manufacture chips in america. I think that is long overdue. I wish we had done more that earlier. Those semiconductor high energy users?
▶ 1:01:19Dr. Su: Plea pleased with our efforts together with the government on bringing more manufacturing back to the united states. The semiconductor manufacturing plants are high energy users and we need more for manufacturing and data centers.
▶ 1:01:38Sen. Moreno: Without chips this does not work. This is not going to happen here, correct?
▶ 1:01:46Dr. Su: We need the highest performing chips and we also need the entire ecosystem for chip manufacturing. Wafers are one-piece but there are many other pieces as well.
▶ 1:01:55Sen. Moreno: Partly powered by solar power and wind mills?
▶ 1:01:59Dr. Su: Today they are not but I think there are opportunities.
▶ 1:02:03Sen. Moreno: Do you think it's outrageous that last year because of the policies of the biden administration that 90% of new power generation in this country was one mills and solar panels and we need cap to american energy? We have a thousand years of natural gas sitting in pennsylvania, ohio, west virginia. 90% of power generation in this country last year was solar panels and windmills. Does that make this country more competitive or less competitive?
▶ 1:02:34Sen. Moreno: Anybody can jump in of that one. -- jump into that one.
▶ 1:02:39Mr. Smith: Two things. We need more electricity. I think her industry is only going to account for 15% of the total traditional electricity in the country. We are going to need electricity from a variety of sources. Today the united states, 56% of comes from carbon. 44% comes from carbon free energy, meaning nuclear, wind or solar. We need a broad-based approach and we need diversity.
▶ 1:03:10Sen. Moreno: 90% was energy that is not affordable, abundant or reliable. Mr. altman, thank you for creating your platform on an open basis and agreeing to stick to the principles of nonprofit status. That's very important. Do you think the internet age did a good job between the beginning of the 1990's, the 2000s of protecting children?
▶ 1:03:39Mr. Altman: I would say not particularly.
▶ 1:03:42Sen. Moreno: You are a new father. Congratulations.
▶ 1:03:47Mr. Altman: It is the most amazing thing ever.
▶ 1:03:48Sen. Moreno: I don't think your child's best friend to be nai child's best friend to be nan ai bot.
▶ 1:03:57Mr. Altman: We talked about some of the things we're doing and we are trying to learn lessons of previous generations. That is the way it goes. People make mistakes and you do it better next time. One thing we say a lot as we want to treat our adult users like adults. Give them a lot of folks ability and let them use the service with a lot of freedom. For children, there needs to be of much higher level of protection. The service will not do some things they might want.
▶ 1:04:26Mr. Altman: Sometimes people say you are being too strict on the rules. We cannot perfectly tell this but if we can draw a line and know for sure the difference between a child and adults, adults will be allowed to be more permissive.
▶ 1:04:38Sen. Moreno: If you could have your team commit to having your teams work with our teams to make sure we put together the right framework early on is maybe the best way to move forward. We don't want to over regulate but we cannot repeat the mistakes of the internet and social media era where children got harmed.
▶ 1:04:58Mr. Altman: Can I say one more thing? The idea of ai and social relationships, it's a new thing that we need to pay a lot of attention to. People are reliant on ai more and more for life advice, emotional support, that kind of thing. It is a newer thing in recent months. I do it's all bad but we have to understand it and watch it very carefully.
▶ 1:05:23Sen. Moreno: Thank you for that. I have talked to your team. Good people. Mr. intrator, can you talk about the intersection between the importance of the robust stablecoin ecosystem here in america and how that has a future with payments and how ai will factor into that? I don't think people see how this fits into the broader puzzle.
▶ 1:05:46Mr. Intrator: Thank you for the question. We did start up as a crypto-based company, a hobby that got away from us. I think stablecoins, crypto, ai share certain dna. They are attempts to build into a future where new technology will make things better for society.
▶ 1:06:16Mr. Intrator: There is a huge potential to use stablecoins, crypto, and ai in a combination of better outcomes.
▶ 1:06:24Sen. Moreno: That was the quickest coup since 1959.
▶ 1:06:30Chair Sheehy: Senator klobuchar.
▶ 1:06:34Sen. Klobuchar: A lot of important things with ai like my state as the home of the mayo clinic with potential to unleash scientific research while we map the human genome and we have rear diseases that can be solved. There's a lot of positive but as you have all expressed there are challenges we need to get at with permitting reform. I'm a big believer in that. Energy development. Thank you, Mr.
▶ 1:07:01Sen. Klobuchar: Smith for mentioning this with wind and solar and potential for more fusion with nuclear. With the price going down dramatically in the last few years. To get there we will have to do a lot better. I think david brooks pu it best when he said I found it incredibly hard to write about ai because it is lily unknown -- literally unknown to the technology is leading us to heaven or hell.
▶ 1:07:30Sen. Klobuchar: We make sure we have some rules of the road in place so it does not get stymied or sent backwards because of scams or because of use by people who want to do is harm. As mentioned by senator cantwell, senator thune and I have set up basic guardrails for the riskiest nondefense applications of ai. Mr. altman, do you agree or risk-based approach to regulation is the best way to place necessary guardrails for ai without stifling innovation?
▶ 1:08:02Mr. Altman: That makes a lot of sense to me.
▶ 1:08:05Sen. Klobuchar: Did you figure that out in your attic?
▶ 1:08:07Mr. Altman: That was a more recent discovery.
▶ 1:08:10Sen. Klobuchar: Just wanted to make sure. Our bill directs the commerce department to develop ways of educating consumers on how to safely use ai systems. Do you agree consumers need to be more educated? This was one of your answers to your five words so I assume you do.
▶ 1:08:29Mr. Smith: Yes. It's incumbent on us as companies to contribute to that education as well.
▶ 1:08:36Sen. Klobuchar: Very good. Mr. altman, the americans rely on ai's increasingly on high-impact problems to make and be be able to trust that we need to be able to trust the model output. The new york times reported this week that ai hallucinations, a new word to me, or models generating correct or misleading results are getting worse. That is their words.
▶ 1:09:04Sen. Klobuchar: What standards or metrics does openai used to evaluate the quality of its training data and model outputs for correctness?
▶ 1:09:11Mr. Altman: Upon the whole hallucinations are getting better. We have not solved the problem entirely although we have made remarkable progress. When he first launched chatgpt, it would hallucinate all the time. The idea of robustness. We have made huge progress. We cite sources. The models have gotten smarter.
▶ 1:09:34Mr. Altman: A lot of people use the systems all the time and we were worried that if it was not 100.0% accurate it would cause a bunch of problems. Users are smart. People understand what the systems are good at. As the robustness increases which it will do people use it for more things. As an industry we have made remarkable progress.
▶ 1:09:59Sen. Klobuchar: We will be watching that. Another challenge that has been -- we have seen an senator cruz and I worked on a bill together for quite a while, but take it down act. We are increasingly seeing internet activity where kids look for a boyfriend or girlfriend put out a real picture of themselves and it ends up being distribute it after school.
▶ 1:10:25Sen. Klobuchar: They somehow or someone tries to scam them for financial gain, or it is ai. It is someone putting a fake body on there. We've had over 20 suicides in one year because they felt like their lives were ruined because they would be exposed in this way. The bill was passed through the senate and house.
▶ 1:10:52Sen. Klobuchar: The first lady supported it and it's heading to the president's desk. Can you talk about how we can build models that can detect harmful deepfakes?
▶ 1:11:04Mr. Smith: We are doing that. Openai is doing that. I number of us are. The goal is to first identify content that is generated by ai, and then often it is to identify what kind of content is harmful. I think we have made strides in our ability to do both of those things.
▶ 1:11:24Mr. Smith: There is a lot of work that is going on across the private sector in partnership to collaboratively identify that content so it can be taken down. We have been doing this in some ways for 25 years, since the internet, and we are going to need to do more of it.
▶ 1:11:42Sen. Klobuchar: Last question, Mr. chair, since the last question was about your bill, I figure it is ok. The newspapers. You testified before the senate judiciary committee about the bill senator kenny and I still think there is an issue about negotiating content rates. Have seen some action recently in canada and other places.
▶ 1:12:05Sen. Klobuchar: Can you talk about those evolving dynamics with ai developers and what is happening to make sure that content providers and journalists get paid for their work?
▶ 1:12:16Mr. Smith: Yeah. It is a complicated topic. I think we should all want to see newspapers in some form flourish across the country, including, say, rural counties that have increasingly become news deserts. Newspapers have disappeared. Second, and it has been the issue we discussed in the judiciary committee, there should be an opportunity for newspapers to get together and negotiate collectively. We supported that. That will enable them to do better.
▶ 1:12:47Mr. Smith: Third, every time there is new technology there is a new generation of a copyright debate. That is taking place now. Some of it will probably be decided by congress. Some by the courts. A lot of it is also being addressed through collaborative action, and we should hope for all of these things to strike a balance. We want people to make a living creating content and we want ai to advance by having access to data.
▶ 1:13:12Sen. Klobuchar: I will ask other questions on the record. Thank you, Mr. chair.
▶ 1:13:16Chair Cruz: Thank you. No, senator klobuchar asked whether ai will lead us to heaven or hell? It reminded me of an observation by yell professor grant gilmore, that in heaven there is no law and the lion will lie down with the lamb. In hell there is nothing but law and due process is meticulously observed. Let me ask you this.
▶ 1:13:47Chair Cruz: This is to each of the four witnesses. In the race for ai who is winning? America or china? If the answer is america, how close is china to us? And what do we do to make sure the answer remains america will win? Mr. altman, we will start with you.
▶ 1:14:07Mr. Altman: It is our belief that the american models, models from our company, and google, and others, are the best in the world. It is hard to say how far ahead we are, but I would say not a huge amount of time.
▶ 1:14:23Mr. Altman: And I think to continue that leadership position, the influence that comes with that, and all of the incredible benefits of the world using american technology products and services, the things that my colleagues have spoken about here, the need to win in infrastructure, sensible regulation that does not still astound. The spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that is a uniquely american thing in the world, none of this is rocket science.
▶ 1:14:52Mr. Altman: Just need to keep doing the things that worked for so long and not make a silly mistake.
▶ 1:14:58Dr. Su: I will answer in the realm of chips. I would say america is ahead in chips today. We have the best ai accelerators in the world. I think china, although they have restrictions, given their ability to used advance -- use advanced technologies, the one thing that is important for us to remember is there are multiple ways to do things. Having the best chips is great, but even if you don't have the best chips you can get a lot done.
▶ 1:15:26Dr. Su: I think this conversation about how far behind china is, they are certainly catching up, because there are many ways to do things. Let's have to what we can do I will continue to say, really, ensure that our spirit of innovation is allowed to work, and that is having their supportive government policies to do that. Having very consistent policies and allowing us to do what we do best, which is innovate at every layer of the stack.
▶ 1:15:53Chair Cruz: Mr. intrator?
▶ 1:15:57Mr. Intrator: I will speak to it from the physical infrastructure and software stack to deliver that. America is ahead, but it is the achilles' heel. The perspective of the ability, as we started to -- better?
▶ 1:16:16Mr. Intrator: So, the ability to build very large solutions to the computing infrastructure component of this is an area we are going to struggle with from a permitting and building large projects to be able to deliver the power to allow those building artificial intelligence to continue to move as fast as they can in the race we are in.
▶ 1:16:39Chair Cruz: Mr. smith?
▶ 1:16:41Mr. Smith: I think the united states has a lead in a race that will likely remain close. The number one factor that defines whether the united states or china wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world. This is a global market, and it will be defined as technology markets typically are, by network effects. 18% of the people in the world live in china.
▶ 1:17:12Mr. Smith: 4% live in the united states. The lesson from huawei and 5g is, whoever gets there first will be difficult to supplant. We need to export with the right kinds of controls. We need to win the trust of the rest of the world. We need to have the financial architecture that gets not only to the countries that are industrialized, but the nations across africa, where typically china and huawei have done so well.
▶ 1:17:41Chair Cruz: So, some of my colleagues have made reference to standards as something that is desirable, and I will say standards is often code word for regulations, and, indeed, the's stifling standards concerning the internet is what killed tech in europe.
▶ 1:18:01Chair Cruz: We are seeing now state legislatures mimicking the eu, such as california's senate bill, which was defeated but would have created essentially a california dmv for ai model registration. How harmful would it be to winning the race for aif america goes down the road of the eu and creates a heavy-handed prior approval government regulatory process for ai?
▶ 1:18:31Mr. Altman: I think that would be disastrous. To give a more specific answer to your previous question, which touches on why it would be so bad, there are three key inputs to your ai systems. There is compute, all of the infrastructure we are talking about, there is algorithms that we all do research on, and there is data. If you don't have any one of those you cannot succeed in making the best models.
▶ 1:19:01Mr. Altman: As brad said, the way for america to influence the world is to have the technology the world most uses. The world uses apple and google and microsoft products. We don't want that to stop happening, so systems that stop us in any of these areas, if we have rules about what data we can train on that are not competitive with the rest of the world, then angst can fall apart.
▶ 1:19:27Mr. Altman: If we are not able to build the infrastructure and particularly manufacture chips in this country, if we cannot build the chips people want, I think people do want american products. If we are prevented from doing that people will a better product made from some else that doesn't have -- you know, that is not stymied in the same way. It is -- I am nervous about standards being set too early.
▶ 1:19:55Mr. Altman: I'm totally fine, you know, with the position my colleagues took him about standards, once they find out what it should be it is fine for them to be a doubt that by government body. I believe the industry is moving toward figuring out the right standards here, and we need the space to innovate and move quickly.
▶ 1:20:17Chair Cruz: My time has expired, so I want to be respectful of that.
▶ 1:20:18Dr. Su: I agree with the comments sam said.
▶ 1:20:23Mr. Smith: I agree, and the point you are making is I have to be -- we have to be careful not to make these pre-approval requirements, including at state levels. Because that would really slow innovation in the country.
▶ 1:20:41Mr. Intrator: I think a patchwork of regulatory overlays will cause friction in the ability to build and extend what we are doing.
▶ 1:20:51Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator curtis. Senator schatz. Apologies.
▶ 1:20:58Sen. Schatz: I want to follow-up on the shaman's question, and what may be an emerging consensus on the committee. I don't think there is anybody even on this side of the dais that is proposing a european-style preapproval. I think there are some people who would like to do nothing at all in the regular toy space, but I think most people understand that some guardrails those of the words you used, Mr.
▶ 1:21:26Sen. Schatz: Altman -- rules and guardrails are necessary. Are you saying that self-regulation is sufficient at the current moment?
▶ 1:21:37Mr. Altman: No, I think some policy is good. I think it is easy for it to go too far, and as I have learned more about how the world works I'm more afraid it could go too far and have the bad consequences. But people want to use products that are generally safe. You know, when you get on an airplane you don't think about doing the safety testing yourself. Maybe this is a bad time to use the airplane example, but you want to trust.
▶ 1:22:05Sen. Schatz: It is an excellent time to use the airplane example. Your point is right. There is a race, but we need to understand what we are racing for, right? It also has to do with american values. It is not just a commercial race that we can edge at our near peer competitors in the public and private sectors. American values prevail internationally. Mr. smith, I want to move on to another topic.
▶ 1:22:35Sen. Schatz: It seems to me that on the consumer side that one of the most basic rights of a user on the internet is to understand what they are looking at were listening to, and whether or not it was created solely by a person, a person using an ai, or automatically generated using ai.
▶ 1:22:58Sen. Schatz: Do you think a labeling regime -- not a prohibition on the use of ai, but a disclosure, especially as it relates to images, music, creativity, do you think a label would be helpful for consumers?
▶ 1:23:12Mr. Smith: Generally, yes, and that is what we in the industry have been helping to create. You are right to focus on images, video, audio files. There is a standard that we in a number of companies now have been advancing. It has content credentials. It enables people to know where something was created, who created it, and I think you are right to know whether it was greeted by person, by an ai, or a person with the help of ai.
▶ 1:23:43Sen. Schatz: I want to use common language, not the language we have all learned to use. When you talk about data as one of the three elements that makes a model work, data really is intellectual property. It is human innovation, human creativity.
▶ 1:24:02Sen. Schatz: And I do think we may have a disagreement -- and I agree with senator klobuchar about the need to understand that these models have been trained on data, but what we are really talking about is human achievement all the way up to now. I have a deep worry -- look, I am an optimist in the energy space in public service space. Certainly in health innovation. There are a lot of exciting opportunities here.
▶ 1:24:29Sen. Schatz: But we are paying people for their knowledge, and I'm concerned that these models are going to be so successful in spitting out what appears to be knowledge that we are going to on the back end not pay people for all of the inputs, and we will have a sort of stalling out of these models. You talked about a tension, but I'm trying to figure out what the tension is other than, you would like to pay as little as possible for these inputs. Go ahead, Mr. smith.
▶ 1:24:59Mr. Smith: Well, you had me until the last sentence.
▶ 1:25:04Sen. Schatz: I know.
▶ 1:25:05Mr. Smith: We create intellectual property. We respect intellectual property. So, we are emphatically of the view that intellectual property should be rewarded. Ultimately intellectual property laws are always about drawing the line. It is really the line you referred to. In copyright there is expression that is protected. If you write a book and somebody copies it, then you are entitled to be paid. But there are ideas.
▶ 1:25:33Mr. Smith: If someone reads your book, as someone remembers that shakespeare wrote a story about two teenagers who fell in love, then that is fair use. That is why this country -- that is what we need to focus on.
▶ 1:25:48Sen. Schatz: With your permission, chairman, I want to ask one final question. >> proceed.
▶ 1:25:54Sen. Schatz: I'm quite excited about the prospect that in 20 years people are going to say, or member when you had to wait on the phone to talk to kaiser permanente or the v.a.? So, I just may be Mr. altman and Mr. smith, I want you to, you know, a buddy of mine used to say, paint a picture and paint me in it.
▶ 1:26:18Sen. Schatz: For the government actually delivering the services, I want you to describe what an ai agent can do to reduce those pain points that we accept as a fact of life in interacted with the government. It seems to me so much of what makes us irritated with the government is the lack of sorting data that exists somewhere, but we cannot get access to it. Very quickly, you have 15 seconds each for some cheerleading.
▶ 1:26:41Mr. Altman: I can imagine a situation where the U.S. government offers an ai powered service that makes it easy to use government services to get great health care, ticket grade education. You have this thing in your pocket that can answer. If you to file your taxes or whatever, you do it instantly in your pocket, fully integrated with the united states government.
▶ 1:27:05Sen. Schatz: Anything to add?
▶ 1:27:08Mr. Smith: Remember when you had to stand in line to renew your driver's license? Remember when you didn't know how to report a pothole that needed to be prepared on your street? Remember when you had a fender bender and you would have to fill out these forms and talk to these people to get insurance coverage? Now you can do it all with one ai system. You can use your phone. By the way, you can do this today in abu dhabi. Need to bring it to america. Thank you. >> senator budd.
▶ 1:27:40Sen. Budd: I have enjoyed the conversations with each of you. The ability of the U.S. to employ energy generation capacity is key to the race against china. Energy is how we can win and lose. Permitting in this country takes too long. China's system means they will not fail to deploy the energy needed to achieve the scale necessary to develop the most advanced models, which will drive all to the benefit of ai.
▶ 1:28:11Sen. Budd: I'm glad to be working with senator lummis on the freed act, which would set up a permanent structure which would let large projects meet come brands of standards at the front end instead of being dragged out. We all want to protect the environment and we all want to maintain U.S. economic and technological leadership. So, Mr. intrator, what has coreweave's experience been in contracting power? Are you concerned that the current permitting system could make it harder for the U.S.
▶ 1:28:41Sen. Budd: To achieve capital investment in the scale needed to win this ai race?
▶ 1:28:46Mr. Intrator: So, as you said, access to power, access to scale power is certainly one of the keys to our ability to win this race. There are others, but it is one I spent a lot of time thinking about.
▶ 1:29:07Mr. Intrator: I separated the comment into access to power and access to scale power, because I do think we are moving toward a period of this race where the size, the magnitude of the infrastructure that is being required to move our artificial intelligence, the labs that are building and the companies building it forward at the velocity necessary, is going to be a specific challenge that
▶ 1:29:37Mr. Intrator: Really requires a lot of thought. We have a huge part of our organization focused on not just getting access to power, but getting access to the size and scale of power that is going to be able to build the infrastructure at this scale, of abilene or close to it, in order to, you know, allow this to move forward. It is tough, right? And it will get harder as we move through time.
▶ 1:30:03Mr. Intrator: Because the existing infrastructure that does have opportunities, it has some levels of elasticity is going to be consumed. Once that is consumed you are going to get down to a first principle. How do we get power online now? That is really going to be challenging within the regulatory environment as it currently is configured.
▶ 1:30:27Sen. Budd: Mr. smith, how is microsoft trying to secure data centers? -- power for its data center? What is federal policy need to focus on so we do not lose this race because we cannot get enough energy?
▶ 1:30:41Mr. Smith: We invest to bring more electricity through our grid and to our data centers. We probably have more permitting applications in more countries and possibly any company on the planet. Last time I looked at it it was 872 applications in more than 40 countries. The number one challenge of the united states when it comes to permitting, interestingly enough, is not local. It is not stay.
▶ 1:31:06Mr. Smith: It is the federal wetlands permit that is administered by the army corps of engineers. We can typically get our local and state permits done in about six to nine months. The national, the wetlands permit is taking off in 18 to 24 months. Both the outgoing biden administration and incoming trump administration have focused on this, but if we could just solve that we could accelerate a lot here in this country.
▶ 1:31:34Sen. Budd: Very helpful, thank you. Mr. altman, much has been made about the chinese open-source models like deepseek. We spoke about that a month or two ago. The concern I have is that accessible chinese models promoted by the chinese communist party might be an attractive option for application developers to build on top of, particularly in developing world economies. How important is U.S. leadership in, either open source or closed ai models?
▶ 1:32:07Mr. Altman: I think it is quite important to lead in both. We realize that we at openai can do more to help, so we are going to release an open-source model we believe will be the leading model the summer because we want people to build on the U.S. stack. A lot of the world uses our technology and the technology of our colleagues.
▶ 1:32:23Sen. Budd: How could federal policy help encourage ai ecosystems to be developed in the U.S.?
▶ 1:32:29Mr. Altman: You touched on a great point with energy. I think it is hard to overstate how important energy is to the future here. Eventually ships network that will be made by robots and will make that very efficient and cheaper and cheaper, but an electron is an electron. The cost of ai will converge to the cost of energy, and it will be how much you can have, the abundance will be limited by the abundance of energy.
▶ 1:32:58Mr. Altman: So, in terms of long-term strategic investments for the U.S. to make I cannot think of anything more important than energy. No, chips and all of the other infrastructure also, but energy is where this ends up.
▶ 1:33:10Sen. Budd: Thank you. >> senator kim.
▶ 1:33:16Sen. Kim: Mr. smith, I think I would like to start with you, because I thought your point about, what exactly is the race, right? We keep talking about the race, and you framed it in a particular way, saying it is about adoption in the rest of the world. The 78%. I want to ask you to tease that out more in terms of understanding what role we could play in congress, in government, in terms of trying to accelerate and champion that ai adoption?
▶ 1:33:50Mr. Smith: I think there is two things. First, it shines light on the importance of getting it right for export controls. Which is the ai diffusion rule being discussed right now. And I think what it shows is, we want to have, I believe is a country, the kinds of national security controls that ensure chips do not get diverted to china, or get accessed by the wrong users, say in china for the wrong reasons.
▶ 1:34:20Mr. Smith: That is something that people have drafted. In the department of commerce. At the same time, we need, I believe, to get rid of the quantitative caps that were created for all of these tier two countries, because what they did was send a message to 120 nations that they could not necessarily count on us to provide the ai they want and need. And just think about it.
▶ 1:34:47Mr. Smith: If this is a critical part of your country's infrastructure, how can you make a bet on suppliers if you are not confident they will be able to fulfill your needs? So, I think you in congress, in the senate, can help the white house through the department of commerce get this right.
▶ 1:35:04Sen. Kim: Mr. altman, is that the right framing of the race? Is it about the adoption, internationally, in terms of other countries? I'm trying to think through part of what you said in a previous response. One other nations to build upon the U.S. ai stack. Is that the right framework? Or is it more about consumer? Is it more about getting the rest of the world and the 70% of the population to adopt ai applications that are U.S.? Or is it interrelated?
▶ 1:35:34Mr. Altman: It is heavily interrelated. The stack is the chips at the bottom to the stack on the top, and we want the whole world on the U.S. stack. Want them to use U.S. services.
▶ 1:35:45Sen. Kim: Is having other nations building on the infrastructure component of the stack, does that more or less than guarantee, or least have a high likelihood that the consumers in that country will be using our products and applications? Is that the theory?
▶ 1:36:03Mr. Altman: It probably does make it marginally more likely, but I also think if someone is using a stack we do not trust to train models, who knows what it is going to do? Who knows what sort of data corruption issues could be possible? I think the ai stack is increasingly going to be a jointly-designed system from the chip all the way up to the end consumer product. And lots of stuff in between.
▶ 1:36:34Mr. Altman: I think separating that will not work that well in practice and we should not want to. I think this point, this is a very critical point. The leverage and power the U.S. gets from having iphones be the mobile device people most want and, you know, google being the search engine people most want around the world, is huge.
▶ 1:36:57Mr. Altman: Talk may be less about how much people want to use chips and other infrastructure developed here, but I think it is no less important, and we should aim to have the entire U.S. stack the adopted by as much of the world as possible.
▶ 1:37:08Sen. Kim: When we were looking at -- you were talking about your investment into models, how are we doing in terms of development of the application -- the tools and applications that are trying to embed in people's lives? Not the overarching models, but do you feel we are at the level of intensity we need to in terms of that type of envelop -- -- the type of development?
▶ 1:37:35Mr. Altman: By quite a significant margin we are glad the people like it, and we need to keep pushing on that. I think it is important for all the reasons you just discussed. There are many other U.S. companies building incredible products and services also getting globally adopted. This is what the U.S. does best.
▶ 1:37:54Sen. Kim: Dr. sue, over and over each of you has talked about talent for this incredible power, but also could be a bottleneck. How are we doing when it comes to development of talent in this country? If you were to give us a great what would you gratis at in terms of our development right now?
▶ 1:38:14Dr. Su: Thank you, senator, for the question. The smartest engineers are in the united states. We have a great base of talent, but what I will say is we need more. We need more hardware developers, software developers.
▶ 1:38:28Sen. Kim: How wide is that delta? If we are talking about this as a race, is that a space where we have a larger amount of delta, or is that a place where it is closing rapidly too?
▶ 1:38:41Dr. Su: I think we have a very talented talent base, but we also have the desire to have the best, and that includes not only U.S. nationals, but also having the best international students.
▶ 1:38:55Sen. Kim: Drawing the talent?
▶ 1:38:58Dr. Su: High skilled immigration is one of those things where we want the best people in the world doing the work in the united states. If I could add something to your previous point about the cycle and what race we are trying to win, technology is one of those things where you can have a very ambitious, positive cycle. In other words, when we leave and more people adopt, that means more developers that make our technology better that increases our lead.
▶ 1:39:28Dr. Su: That is what we want, to have our leadership increase over time. >> senator schmitt.
▶ 1:39:35Sen. Schmitt: Mr. altman, I really enjoyed and was inspired by your story with a light on. And the home you grew up in st. Louis. You talked about the spirit of innovation. That is the spirit of st. Louis. That is a good story to hear, and we look forward to more investment in st. Louis from your company. That would be great too. I will put a plug in for that.
▶ 1:39:58Sen. Schmitt: I do want to ask you, specifically, there is a lot made of the comparison between the united states and the regulatory environment, what exists in europe. It specifically -- and I will open this up. What specifically has gone wrong in europe that we can draw some conclusions from?
▶ 1:40:18Mr. Altman: First of all, we would love to figure out how to invest more in st. Louis. I would love to get to go home more. I will point out one example that is very painful to users. When we launch a new feature or new model we have what is now considered an in-choque, where we say we have this great new thing, not available in the and other countries, because they have this long process before a
▶ 1:40:50Mr. Altman: Model can go out. And there will be, I believe, great models and services that are quite safe and robust that we will be unable to offer in other regulatory regimes. And if you are trying to be competitive in this new world and consistently some number of months behind what other people in other countries get access to, that is an example that is extremely painful to users.
▶ 1:41:16Sen. Schmitt: You mentioned your observation that the ai stack make it more vertically integrated. So, how does that work then? Because right now the best estimates, I suppose, is that china is two months to six months behind, maybe on large lane which models. Hopefully some of the advances we are seeing in the U.S. there is a degree of separation.
▶ 1:41:40Sen. Schmitt: It is hard to know with deepseek, but then you get down to the chips and that advantage is more like a couple of years probably. Something like that. If that is where we are headed does that increase the U.S.'s advantage, or does that allow china to catch up quicker as we get vertically integrated?
▶ 1:42:06Mr. Altman: I think there is a lot of things that can increase U.S. leadership, but we touched on this earlier. I think it is so important. There will be great chips made around the world. There will be great models trained around the world. If united states companies can win on products and the sort of all of the positive feedback loops that come from how you can improve this once real users are using these products in their daily lives, that is something special that is not so easy to catch up with just by doing good chips and good models. Making sure the U.S.
▶ 1:42:33Mr. Altman: Can win at the product level is quite important. That is in addition to all of the chips -- the infrastructure algorithms and data. I think this is a new area where the U.S. is winning and has a very strong cumulative effect.
▶ 1:42:50Sen. Schmitt: Mr. intrator -- did I pronounce correctly, by the way?
▶ 1:42:56Sen. Schmitt: Staying on this regulatory environment, one of the things that is most concerning that is coming out of europe is this sort of censorship regime that exists not just online, but in real life. But certainly it is happening online. People are being arrested for things they say online.
▶ 1:43:16Sen. Schmitt: And one of the concerns I have with ai, I suppose, is if we end up with a place that it is somehow policing "misinformation ," and, you know, I think even in this most recent voluntary standards one of the risks to be on the lookout for was the spread of misinformation.
▶ 1:43:46Sen. Schmitt: The point of the christian -- the question is, how do we make sure that I think part of what is going on in europe is it is a funneling of information, and in my view, whether I agree with the point of view or not, it ought to be out there. You combat speech you do not agree with not by censoring it, but with more speech. To some lessons to be learned there and make sure that does not happen here?
▶ 1:44:13Mr. Intrator: So, europe is moving forward with its regulatory regime in a european way. From our seed, where we have to make these enormous capital investments, one of the things about the approach that europe is taking that we are deeply concerned about every day is the balkanization, to use, of how
▶ 1:44:44Mr. Intrator: They go about allowing information to flow and how they go about regulating and how they go about with each component of their union, having its own set of rules, which would be tremendously challenging in europe as time goes on. Because it is really hard to make the magnitude of investments.
▶ 1:45:11Sen. Schmitt: Beyond that, jurisdictionally, I'm talking about content now.
▶ 1:45:18Mr. Intrator: So, the role of our company is really kind of below that. You know, and, you know, sam and , you know, microsoft, you're going to get a lot more attention paid to the content level because of the role they play in the stack. It is not really where we are primarily focused. We are focused on the investment side.
▶ 1:45:42Sen. Schmitt: If any of you, Mr. altman, if you would like to respond to that I would like to get some answer.
▶ 1:45:52Mr. Altman: I -- I think -- well, first of all, I strongly agree that people getting, you know, put in jail for stuff they say online is very not american, not what we should be doing. Ai is quite different than social media, at least in its current evolution. People are using these tools in a one-on-one way, instead of this massive thing online.
▶ 1:46:18Mr. Altman: I think it is easy to make too many analogies, but it is a little bit dangerous to talk about ai and the things we are going to face here in the same way. That we did for social media. But our stance is we need to give adult users a lot of freedom to use ai in the way they want to use it, and to trust them to be responsible with the tool.
▶ 1:46:42Mr. Altman: And I know there is increasing pressure in other places around the world, and some in the U.S., to not do that, but I think this is a tool that we need to make powerful and capable. We will of course put guardrails in very wide bounds, but we need to give a lot of freedom.
▶ 1:47:00Sen. Schmitt: There is a lot more questions there we will follow up with. >> senator hickenlooper.
▶ 1:47:07Sen. Hickenlooper: I could have given you a minute or two. Mr. smith, microsoft has a long history in transforming work places through software. From windows operating system, to its office applications, like powerpoint, excel, and now the ai-powered copilot application. In software development lifecycles seem to be becoming increasingly shorter.
▶ 1:47:38Sen. Hickenlooper: It's becoming more frequent. What are the internal processes that microsoft follows to evaluate copilot's accuracy and performance before it was released? And what kind of independent review teams other than microsoft's own product developers are involved in that? Who do you bring in to help with that?
▶ 1:47:56Mr. Smith: First of all, since most of what we are talking about here when you're talking about our copilots, start with models of the left at openai. I would say openai has its internal process. There is then a joint deployment safety board, where we decide together whether something is safe to deploy. As the name implies.
▶ 1:48:23Mr. Smith: We at the applications level have our own deployment safety board. We have a variety of engineering tools that we use to assess these features. We test these features. We have read teams, meaning competing teams, that often go to work to kind of attacked the features. And then ultimately the product is released when those tests are completed and the results are satisfactory.
▶ 1:48:48Sen. Hickenlooper: I like that. Let me go over to Mr. altman. Obviously you will have an incentive to ensure the products are high quality and safe, but the field is so competitive, in applied research, with rigorous testing, these constant improvements are fundamental steps to the performance of a model.
▶ 1:49:16Sen. Hickenlooper: So, risk assessments are that key tool. I'm a big believer in evidence-based technical standards. I have been accused of being the only real scientist who has published peer-reviewed papers in the senate. Mr.
▶ 1:49:38Sen. Hickenlooper: Altman, do you believe independent evaluations based on standards performed by qualified evaluators and done voluntarily could help validate the testing that you are performing internally and in conjunction with peer companies?
▶ 1:49:54Mr. Altman: Thank you, senator, and I think it is awesome that you have published peer-reviewed papers.
▶ 1:50:00Sen. Hickenlooper: On the maslow's triangle of science I was near the bottom. I was a geologist, so I'm not high up red-p -- high up.
▶ 1:50:09Mr. Altman: Geometry is great. What you say is very important. It is an important part of our process today. External testing helps us find things. We are very proud of our safety record on the whole. We have not been perfect, but I think we do have a process that is leaning toward models that the public generally thinks are safe and robust to use.
▶ 1:50:35Mr. Altman: And we have developed techniques to be -- to deliver the but external testers are a critical part of that process, and I think they have helped us find many things in the models.
▶ 1:50:46Sen. Hickenlooper: Mr. smith, would you add anything to that?
▶ 1:50:50Mr. Smith: No.
▶ 1:50:52Sen. Hickenlooper: Someone giving testimony who doesn't have something to add. It is a moment of scientific reflection. Dr. su, the bipartisanship some science act, a historic effort to maintain U.S. leadership in emerging technologies like semi conductors, but others as well, as the technology arms race continues globally, amd plays a key role in delivering state-of-the-art designs.
▶ 1:51:21Sen. Hickenlooper: The best for the new chips that are going to power electrons and the devices that are going to allow ai to become global. As scientists work around the clock to develop new breakthroughs and increase and improve performance, but at the same time shorten r&d timelines, what do you see as the next frontier of chip technology? In terms of energy efficiency?
▶ 1:51:52Sen. Hickenlooper: And this is not just based on the chinese competitors, but how can we work together to improve direct to chip cooling for high-performance computing?
▶ 1:52:02Dr. Su: I think you for the question. There is a tremendous amount of innovation that is going on in the semi conductor there space today. The chips and science act was helpful in raising the profile of chips in the united states. Ella tip two, what are we doing to go faster and build a more power efficient chip? Prickly, we are using ai extensively through our chip development cycles.
▶ 1:52:29Dr. Su: And it does allow us to augment what are typically very long cycles. Many years, several years for us to develop chips. We can shorten the time and also improve the efficiency, and there are lots of rate new technologies in terms of cooling technologies that are super-important for us to build a large scale system we talked about earlier today. Thank you for the question.
▶ 1:52:51Sen. Hickenlooper: I am out of time. I will yield back to the chair.
▶ 1:52:55Chair Cruz: Senator hickenlooper , as a texan, I think geologists are awesome.
▶ 1:53:02Sen. Hickenlooper: We have a consensus.
▶ 1:53:05Chair Cruz: Senator curtis.
▶ 1:53:09Sen. Curtis: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Mr. altman, you started a one upmanship on computers, and I will just tell you in 1985, the month you were born, I was attending a class at reagan young university and carried in a laptop and was almost kick out.
▶ 1:53:24Chair Cruz: What laptop?
▶ 1:53:27Sen. Curtis: Is a trs 80. It ran on four aa batteries. >> that is incredible.
▶ 1:53:36Sen. Curtis: I am very envious of your generation. Let me start with you. I think you tell what aspire to lead with data centers and advanced technologies. Can you address for states, and utah specifically, what it is that makes them attractive to projects like stargate?
▶ 1:53:56Mr. Altman: I know that we are having productive discussions about some potential sites in utah. Power, cooling, fast permitting process, labor force they can build these things, the electricians, the construction workers, the entire stack. A state that wants to partner with us to move quickly. Texas has been unbelievable on this. I think that would be a good thing for other states to study, but we would be eager to work something out.
▶ 1:54:25Sen. Curtis: We would be excited as well, but this brings challenges. One of those challenges, the demands for energy. What is your thought on how we protect ratepayers and put a little bit of a firewall between them?
▶ 1:54:40Mr. Altman: I think the best way is much more supply. More generation. I think if you make it easy to reasonably, profitably create a lot of additional generative capacity the market will do that. That will not only not drive up rates because of the ai -- hopefully it will drive them down for everything. Have talked about the importance of energy in ai. Energy is important to quality of life.
▶ 1:55:10Mr. Altman: One of the things that seems to be consistent throughout history is every time the cost of energy falls the quality of life goes up. So, we are doing a lot to make energy cheaper in the short term. This looks like more natural gas, although there are some applications where solar can help in the medium term. I hope it is advanced nuclear. Fission and fusion. More energy is important beyond ai.
▶ 1:55:35Mr. Altman: In some sense we have these dual revolutions that the ability to have new ideas and the ability to get them done, to make them happen in the physical world, these are kind of the limiting reagents of prosperity.
▶ 1:55:48Sen. Curtis: Thank you. Mr. smith, we talked about how significant power was -- is -- to success here. What role do you think microsoft and other tech leaders have in developing energy and particularly the right type of energy?
▶ 1:56:08Mr. Smith: I think we have a responsibility to contribute to the solution. I would highlight two things. I would illustrate it with what we do everywhere, but most recently with the major site in southeastern wisconsin. We went from zero, basically, to becoming the largest industrial user of electricity in the state. Roughly 400 megawatts.
▶ 1:56:33Mr. Smith: And so, we worked with the local utility, we made the investment to help and really enable them to expand their electricity generation. That electricity then needed to be delivered from their powerplant through the grid, to our data center.
▶ 1:56:51Mr. Smith: We went to the public utilities commission and we proposed a rate increase on ourselves because we thought it was important that we pay for that improvement to the grid so that the neighbors, so to speak, would not have to. I think what it illustrates is the collaborative partnerships that are needed to provide the capital, to do the instruction, to improve the grid, and to be very sensitive to the community as a whole.
▶ 1:57:19Sen. Curtis: Thank you. Mr. altman, let me come back to you. I was a small business owner. I have a spot in my heart for small business owners. Can we talk about chatgpt and how that might assist small business owners? Let me paint a broader picture. Have heard a lot about other tools that are perhaps out-of-favor. Particularly with the U.S. government, that are helpful for small businesses.
▶ 1:57:45Sen. Curtis: But I don't know if small businesses are fully understanding the platform you have and how they might use it for marketing, for data research, and ways to help their small business be successful.
▶ 1:57:56Mr. Altman: There were all of these moments as chatgpt was beginning to take off where we are like, we may have a hit on our hands. Someone is using it for this. You see someone using it in a coffee shop. But one of the ones that sticks out for me is pretty quickly after chatgpt launched, like, in the first six months, I was in an uber and the driver was making conversations collect, have you heard of this thing called chatgpt?
▶ 1:58:26Mr. Altman: Yeah, what do you think about it? He was using it to run, basically, his entire small business. He was like, I had all of these problems, I couldn't find good people to write my ads. I couldn't get legal documents reviewed. I couldn't answer emails. He was an early adopter, but he was one of these people that was making a small business work. It is nice to reflect on it again now.
▶ 1:58:51Mr. Altman: We have now heard that at scale from a lot of people, but that was one of those moments where, this is maybe going to work.
▶ 1:58:58Sen. Curtis: I am out of time, but this is something more than helping proofread emails? I think we would all agree with that?
▶ 1:59:07Mr. Altman: It is.
▶ 1:59:08Sen. Curtis: Mr. chairman, I yield back time.
▶ 1:59:12Chair Cruz: Senator duckworth.
▶ 1:59:14Sen. Duckworth: I think you for being here today. I want to begin by talking about the importance of partnerships between the private sector and our national laboratories in maintaining united states leadership in ai. Illinois is a proud home of two crown jewels of national laboratories. Fermilab and argonne national laboratory, home to the aurora supercomputer that will accelerate breakthroughs in ai, cancer research, and physics.
▶ 1:59:46Sen. Duckworth: There is nothing more important than sustaining and amplifying investments in our nation's incredible network of national labs. Yet donald trump and elon musk are plotting to take a chainsaw to the vital initiatives being carried out across our country. This is a self sabotaging attack, plain and simple. If allowed to proceed trump and musk will inflict lasting harm on our capacity that our enemies could only dream of achieving.
▶ 2:00:16Sen. Duckworth: Does anyone truly have confidence that had doge been around decades ago they would not have got the project that created the internet? My question to any member of the panel is the following. Can you explain the importance of the national lab system to maintaining our research edge and discuss any partnerships you have discussed or are pursuing, especially those threatened by massive cuts to research?
▶ 2:00:45Mr. Altman: We partner with the national labs. Also, senator, I would love to go visit fermilab someday.
▶ 2:00:53Sen. Duckworth: That was my next question. You are welcome.
▶ 2:00:57Mr. Altman: There is many wonderful things that ai is going to do for the world, but the one I am most excited about is the impact ai will have on scientific discovery. I believe that new scientific discovery is the most important input to the world getting better and people's quality of life getting better over time. It is hard to overstate where we would be -- where we are because of scientific advancement and where we would be without it.
▶ 2:01:27Mr. Altman: So, we are thrilled to partner with the national labs on this. I think science has not been as efficient as it can be, and we are also thrilled to hear from scientists that there are multiples more effective than they used to be. I think the ai tools can mean we can accomplish at some point the same cost or even less, this will be one of the most important contributions, in my opinion, ai makes to the world, and it is no longer theoretical.
▶ 2:01:57Mr. Altman: The national labs are a great example. It is the only partnership we have given a model to another organization. It is a very deep and important partnership to us. And I expect that will bear through -- bear fruit.
▶ 2:02:08Sen. Duckworth: Anyone else on the panel?
▶ 2:02:13Mr. Smith: I think you highlighted an important issue. This country has labs administered by the department of industry -- apartment of industry and universities. Together they are the fabric of much of scientific discovery and have been since the manhattan project in world war ii. We in the tech sector, work with almost all of them.
▶ 2:02:42Mr. Smith: There is a particular cycle of innovation that the united states has mastered you have curiosity-driven research in these institutions, and the advances move out of those institutions into startups, and into larger companies. And what I always find interesting is, I meet with officials around the world. They have studied this. They seek to emulate it. I always worry that in the united states we run the risk of taking it for granted.
▶ 2:03:12Mr. Smith: We should never take this for granted. It is the foundation for the country's technological leadership.
▶ 2:03:19Sen. Duckworth: Very much so. Dr. su?
▶ 2:03:23Dr. Su: We are also very large supporters of the public-partnerships with the labs. I think the national labs have, in a way, tried to look ahead of the curve, and that is a great place for us to invest. We think they are a key piece. We partnered with all of the national labs as well over the last decade, and that continues to be a place where I think there can be significant public-private partnership.
▶ 2:03:49Sen. Duckworth: Thank you.
▶ 2:03:52Mr. Intrator: I think it would be interesting to come to these ai factories and walk here, or travel through these institutions. And identify all of the different pieces of the science that leads back and was ultimately driven and found it on something that came out of those institutions. Because it is amazing, actually.
▶ 2:04:14Sen. Duckworth: Would any of the remaining three of you like to come to a lab in illinois? I will give you tours. All four of you. It is done. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:04:25Chair Cruz: Senator young.
▶ 2:04:28Sen. Young: . Thank you for holding this important hearing on winning the ai race. One of the things that I like to underscore, whenever I talk about this issue, is, we are not just discussing a race to create jobs. We are not just discussing a race to figure out how to eke out more growth from our economy. Although that is important.
▶ 2:04:58Sen. Young: Just how to identify how humans can flourish more, especially americans through application of ai solutions to our daily lives, but this is an issue of national and economic security. One folks at home to get that. I know our panelists are highly conversant and knowledgeable about that.
▶ 2:05:23Sen. Young: In my discussions with you and others I have heard we need to work with like minded partners -- like-minded partners and allies to win this race, and it is only going to be done collectively. I have heard from a number of youth that this race is in part about getting market share, diffusion of our ai models and solutions into other countries.
▶ 2:05:46Sen. Young: It is through that means for me to perhaps elaborate on your thoughts, that we can see that our own values are danced, these models presumably will be embedded with our values related to privacy and transparency, and property rights, and freedom of speech and religion. Not the values of the chinese communist party on each of those fronts.
▶ 2:06:11Sen. Young: Then if we can establish digital trade rules, digital cross-border agreements on digital trade with these other countries, we could conceivably erect higher barriers to entry for models that don't come embedded with our standards. Models of, say, the chinese communist party has given sanction two. So, there is a geopolitical national security overlay to this entire conversation.
▶ 2:06:40Sen. Young: Which is why I think the chairman's emphasis on not overly huffing and straining innovation or deployment is important. But it is also why I think it is important that we be thinking about how to work with other countries in their standards development, and so, that is where I want to begin asking questions. I will start with Mr. smith.
▶ 2:07:08Sen. Young: If the united states does not adopt some standards, through some entity, whether it is nist or another federally-sanctioned entity, then want other nations go ahead and feel the need to adopt their standards without any consultation?
▶ 2:07:26Mr. Smith: I think it is a really important point you make, and it is the lesson from the evolution of privacy law. You know, the united states did not adopt a national privacy law. Europe did, twice. And most american companies of any size today apply across the united states work that complies with european privacy law. It is just more efficient.
▶ 2:07:54Mr. Smith: I think the united states needs to be in the game internationally to influence the rest of the world, and you cannot be in the game if you do not do something. See you take senator cruz's approach, a lightweight approach, and build support around that.
▶ 2:08:11Sen. Young: Just to unpack that, and I will stay with Mr. smith. Apologize to everyone else. My time is limited. Would it be easier to shape the standards of other large economy countries that share most of our values if we already have a set of standards adopted?
▶ 2:08:29Mr. Smith: Generally, yes. We always have to be careful, because if you go before the standards have come together but you have got to have some kind of model that you can show the rest of the world and win support for.
▶ 2:08:44Sen. Young: Presumably standards could be harmonized, right? They are not chiseled onto a tablet, so to speak, right?
▶ 2:08:51Mr. Smith: That is indispensable. If our technology is going to go around the world we need a set of regulations that in effect create that basis for reciprocity and interoperability.
▶ 2:09:03Sen. Young: Only have 25 seconds left. Our -- are there any violent objections to Mr. smith's position? That seems eminently reasonable to me. It seems consistent with a light touch approach, but also shows a sense of urgency that the united states needs to act. The last thing I will say in my remaining 10 seconds is that I am planning on introducing legislation today called the ai public awareness and education campaign act.
▶ 2:09:35Sen. Young: With several of my colleagues, and our aim is to have a whole of government approach to foster greater awareness of ai literacy and stem opportunities to create the next generation of our workforce and looking forward to moving that forward. So, it will be available for public review, critique. Even accolades. And, Mr. chairman, I yield back.
▶ 2:09:59Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator blunt rochester.
▶ 2:10:04Sen. Blunt Rochester: . This is such an important hearing. Five minutes will not suffice for me. I will be submitting some questions for the record. I noticed for Mr. altman and smith, when a question of paint me a picture of the future came up, you leaned up in your chair. There was a level of excitement. That is how I am about the future.
▶ 2:10:26Sen. Blunt Rochester: When I came into the house of representatives in 2017i started a future of work bipartisan calc -- bipartisan caucus because I had a concern that there were certain groups of people that were going to be left behind, but also as a country we could be left behind. And I started -- I have an event where we had everyone walking to a room and use a word cloud and tell me what you think of when you hear the future of work. The biggest word coming in the door was fear.
▶ 2:10:57Sen. Blunt Rochester: The biggest word walking out the door was opportunity. And so, to me, this conversation is so vital to think about the opportunities, but also making sure that we are watching out for ethics. Watching out for scams. Watching out that technology does not take over the human. I am grateful for the conversation, and, Mr. altman, I listen to an interview that you gave with lester holt. Maybe a year or so ago.
▶ 2:11:27Sen. Blunt Rochester: And you talked in that interview about how openai, it was not initially about making a product. It was not about the money. So, I know you are incorporated in delaware. Working with our attorney general doing the previously-proposed legislation to transition to a for-profit.
▶ 2:11:52Sen. Blunt Rochester: This monday openai decided to apply it to become a public benefit corporation instead and have the ppc governor your nonprofit arm. When into this decision and what considerations influence the timing of the organizational change?
▶ 2:12:11Mr. Altman: Thank you for the question, senator. It is a complicated thing, but I think it has gotten misrepresented. This is a wonderful form to talk about it. We never planned to have the nonprofit convert into anything. The nonprofit was always going to be the nonprofit. There were a bunch of other considerations about, is it the board that would control the nonprofit somehow or how our capital structure was going to work.
▶ 2:12:42Mr. Altman: There was a lot of speculation, but our plan has always been to have a robust nonprofit. We hope our nonprofit will be the best resource nonprofit in the world. A pbc with a mission that would make it possible for us to raise the capital needed to deliver these tools and services at the quality level and availability level that people use the mac. But still stick to our mission, which we have been proud of over the last almost decade of our progress.
▶ 2:13:12Mr. Altman: So, we had a lot of productive conversations with a lot of stakeholders and lawyers about the best way to do this. It took longer than we thought it was going to. No, I would have guessed we would have been talking about this last year, but now we have a proposal that people seem pretty excited about and we are trying to advance.
▶ 2:13:29Sen. Blunt Rochester: Dr. su, your company primarily operates in the physical hardware portion of the ai stack. I have a bill with senators cantwell and blackburn called the promoting resilient supply chains act, which authorizes the department of commerce to strengthen supply chains for critical supplies and emerging technologies.
▶ 2:13:54Sen. Blunt Rochester: Semiconductor and chip manufacturing is critical to advancing ai, but we are facing these global supply chain constraints. What specific policies -- and I know you mentioned policies as well for supply chains -- would need to adopt to help american companies overcome the supply chain issues. And compete with our rivals?
▶ 2:14:19Sen. Blunt Rochester: >> there is no question the semi conductor supply chain is critical for us to win the ai race. The efforts that have been made to move manufacturing back to the U.S. have been positive. There is a lot more we can do.
▶ 2:14:37Sen. Blunt Rochester: One of the most important aspects if you think about it end to end, there are so many steps beginning to end in a semi conductor supply chain including packaging, the back ends and system tests. All of those avenues need to have a footprint in the U.S. we have allies around the world are excellent partners. We would like to see those partnerships continue to flourish. >> last question if I can.
▶ 2:15:10Sen. Blunt Rochester: Mr. smith, how do you see the interdependence -- vulnerabilities or opportunities in the ai supply chain?
▶ 2:15:19Mr. Smith: I think they create more opportunities than vulnerabilities because it enables companies to do what they do best and then we can work together. The world today has an integrated supply chain for anything that you buy but we do not think about it when we go to the grocery store. One of the strengths of the tech sector is we have a string of pearls.
▶ 2:15:47Mr. Smith: Great companies in every layer of the stack. We will need, frankly, more great companies, especially at the applications layer and that is how we work together. >> thank you so much. I am out of time but we will be following up with questions for the record as well as individually. >> Mr. moran.
▶ 2:16:10Sen. Moran: Mr. smith mentioned data privacy. We have been unsuccessful in legislation being adopted. I still have the goal of making certain consumers have control over their own data. I would ask you, how can we provide consumers with more control over how their data is used by ai companies.
▶ 2:16:40Sen. Moran: How do you get more privacy?
▶ 2:16:42Mr. Altman: There are all of the standard diversey controls but there is a new area. People are sharing more information with ai systems than they have in previous generations of technology. The model can get very personalized to you. This is a wonderful thing and we should find a way to enable it.
▶ 2:17:11Mr. Altman: The fact these ai systems will get to know you over the course of your life so well presents a new challenge and level of importance for how we think about privacy in the world of ai. How we make sure that when one system connects to another it shares the program information.
▶ 2:17:36Mr. Altman: I believe this will become one of the most important issues as people come to integrate the technology more into their lives. It is an area to take quite seriously. So moran we do we just do not have success in finding the conclusion. It plays a significant role in cyber security of our country.
▶ 2:18:08Mr. Altman: I just came from a budget hearing with the fbi director in which we covered cyber security threats. I think this is true -- ai can be used on both sides of a cybersecurity attack. It can be used to automate ph ishing, malware creation and machine learning can also increase our ability to detect and respond to cyber threats.
▶ 2:18:36Mr. Altman: What should congress think about allocation of federal resources for cybersecurity? >> I would say that ai is both an offensive weapon and a defensive shield when it comes to cybersecurity. As with many other things, the front line of this the last few years has been in ukraine. Russia has such sophisticated ability.
▶ 2:19:06Mr. Altman: What we have found as a company that has been involved in supporting ukraine since literally the moment the war began is ai is a game changer. We have intercepted attacks against ukraine faster than a human could detect them. We have blocked those attacks from taking place. You deploy ai into the front products themselves.
▶ 2:19:36Mr. Altman: We have to recognize it is ultimately the people who defendant not just countries but governments. We have created a cybersecurity copilot that automates for those individuals much of the workflow that takes their time so they can be more effective and efficient.
▶ 2:20:03Mr. Altman: When it comes to federal appropriations, to put it simply the united states government must remain at the forefront of having for itself the cybersecurity capabilities it needs to defend the government. Every day, we are in government agencies today, during this hearing, pushing the chinese out of agencies. This will happen every day of every year from now until eternity. We must keep the U.S.
▶ 2:20:32Mr. Altman: Government well funded in this space. We also need our intelligence agencies and especially the msa to be well funded so they can remain at the forefront when it comes to global leadership. >> thank you for your observations. My final question, rural areas often lack high-speed broadband.
▶ 2:21:00Mr. Altman: Since many ai tools rely upon connectivity, I am concerned that many parts of the country and many parts of kansas may not be able to access the benefits ai will bring business schools, health care, etc. What can the federal government do to be supportive of availability for low broad bandwidth ai systems that do not rely on constant connectivity?
▶ 2:21:25Mr. Altman: >> I am generally pretty excited about what ai can do here. You can have so much of it on the cloud and ship a small amount of data. A text comes in, there is a brain that thinks about it. We can support people in low connectivity areas quite well with this service. Separately to that I think getting great connectivity everywhere is important. In this specific area of ai we can address that.
▶ 2:21:56Sen. Moran: That is good to know. Thank you very much.
▶ 2:22:01Sen. Lujan: I want to begin by recognizing and thanking Mr. altman and Mr. smith for your organization's ongoing -- and Dr. su. Dr. su and Mr. altman, can you explain how your partnership with the national labs support scientific research?
▶ 2:22:29Sen. Lujan: You explain this to a question asked by senator duckworth as well but if you could just touch on that quickly.
▶ 2:22:36Mr. Altman: Our latest models are good at scientific reasoning. Come up with new ideas, propose experience, analyze data in a way that they could not in the past. We invite other scientists spent time in previous models and say it is interesting.
▶ 2:22:58Mr. Altman: These new models are the first time we are hearing from scientists at the national labs and elsewhere that this is a legitimate game changer.
▶ 2:23:08Dr. Su: I would add the same. Our partnerships have seen tremendous opportunity. We have large-scale computer across the labs and the ability to develop new applications that take advantage of high-performance computing together with the new ai model capability that we just talked about. It is a great opportunity to substantially move forward the ability for scientific discovery.
▶ 2:23:35Sen. Lujan: Can you explain why federal investment and foundational research and standard bodies are crucial to companies?
▶ 2:23:46Mr. Altman: I think standards can help increase the rate of innovation but it is important the industry figure out what they should be first. A bad standard can really set things back. I think there is a new protocol to discover. I believe the industry will figure that out. And that I think officially that will be helpful.
▶ 2:24:14Dr. Su: I believe public-private partnerships allow us to think ahead of the curve. We do a lot of things very well. However, the beauty of the national labs and federal research is it allows more blue sky research. That is a positive add. The key is how we make sure one federal dollar goes much further than that with a private investment on top of that.
▶ 2:24:41Sen. Lujan: Yesterday I reintroduced a piece of legislation called the test ai act which has bipartisan support which would simply improve the federal government's capacity to test and evaluate in these areas. Very much appreciate both of your responses. This is just one of many steps needed to ensure the united states stays ahead.
▶ 2:25:07Sen. Lujan: Despite strong support across the country including from industry leaders today president trump's annihilating budgets for basic research. There are questions from so many. I would argue this would destroy our nation's competitive advantage. I call on all my colleagues that we look at the investments to the national science foundation, national institute of health. Let's work together. Let's find ways to address questions.
▶ 2:25:35Sen. Lujan: Let's insure these investments are making a difference so we have more successes and more hearings celebrating what we are celebrating today. Beyond your partnership with the federal government I would like to know more about how you partner with local communities when building out centers. Data centers put a strain on energy and water resources. Unlike other businesses they do not introduce many long-term jobs or economic benefits. Mr.
▶ 2:26:01Sen. Lujan: Smith, how many engineers do you have dedicated to hardware optimization to reduce energy use? When you build a center what initiatives do you have in place to reduce water use?
▶ 2:26:12Mr. Smith: I do not know off the top of my head the number working on optimization but would be happy to track down a number and get it to you. Water use is a huge priority. Especially in data centers in the southwestern united states and other countries around the world, where water is in short supply. If you look at our data centers today they run on liquid cooling. It is a closed loop system.
▶ 2:26:42Mr. Smith: The liquid is a combination of water and other chemicals. Basically once it starts running , almost all of the water is recycled. The amount of water we consume is typically far, far smaller than what most people would estimate. We also have a commitment to water replenishment. Our goal is to be water positive -- meaning we are providing more water to the community than we are consuming.
▶ 2:27:12Mr. Smith: For example, across the U.S. today we have more than 90 water replenishment -- focuses on water security for the river. I think it is a good example of how we can play a role in addressing an issue that is of growing importance.
▶ 2:27:31Sen. Lujan: Same question.
▶ 2:27:35Mr. Intrator: I cannot answer the question of how many engineers we have focused on it but the ability to extract more computation of power at a given megawatt is of paramount importance to my company, to all of us in this room.
▶ 2:27:57Mr. Intrator: We spend an enormous amount of time integrating the most leading edge technology, which is a function more efficient in terms of its computational output than the legacy technology has historically done. Moving to liquid cooling has been an incredible improvement in efficiency.
▶ 2:28:26Mr. Intrator: We face this problem within a given data center, within a given power envelope. How much can we move the computation of resources forward? That is an important part of what we do.
▶ 2:28:39Sen. Lujan: I have other questions I will submit to the record. Mr. moran asked one question, can you answer yes or no? In order for ai to reach its full prominence people should be able to connect to fast and affordable internet?
▶ 2:28:56Dr. Su: Yes.
▶ 2:28:58Sen. Lujan: Thank you, I yield back. >> thank you all for coming today. I have been amazed at the outstanding progress that continues to be made in this field. I'm already seeing people in wyoming using chatgpt to improve their businesses, whether it is mining. Ranching.
▶ 2:29:26Sen. Lujan: I am excited about what this opportunity brings to america. As I see it, the world has presented us with two paths. On one hand, the e.u. Has chosen to regulate first and ask questions later. The gdpr is limiting access to the most capable ai models.
▶ 2:29:52Sen. Lujan: On the other hand, china appears to be fast tracking ai development, standing up large amounts of energy very quickly in an attempt to outcompete america. I would like to ask a few questions about how we can make sure we get the full benefit of this technology and accelerate its development.
▶ 2:30:13Sen. Lujan: First question, over the past year we have seen many states, including california and texas consider their own ai frameworks. Each one significantly burdensome in their own right. At the same time, our lead against china is shrinking to about only six months. First of all, Mr. altman, could you please sketch out what the world could look like if the U.S.
▶ 2:30:41Sen. Lujan: Were to have a patchwork regulatory framework, and how that could impact our competitiveness?
▶ 2:30:48Mr. Altman: I think it would be quite bad. It is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation. In many of these states there have been dozens of bills proposed. That will slow us down and I do not think it is in anyone's interest for us to slow down.
▶ 2:31:15Mr. Altman: One federal framework that we can understand and lets us move with the speed this moment calls for, seems important and find, but this every state takes a different approach I think would be quite burdensome and significantly impair our ability to do what we need to do.
▶ 2:31:34Sen. Lummis: Does anyone disagree with Mr. altman's assessment of the patchwork? Thank you. . I have some questions about the infrastructure that is going to be necessary to lead and compete in ai. My next questions are for our infrastructure providers, Mr. smith and Mr. intrator.
▶ 2:32:04Sen. Lummis: Could you elaborate on how current processes have affected your ability to rapidly deploy ai infrastructure? The more specific you can be, the better.
▶ 2:32:16Mr. Intrator: Quick comment on the patchwork. The investment we are making on the infrastructure side is enormous. The idea that you can make an investment that can then become trapped in a jurisdiction that has a particular type of regulation that would not allow you to make full use of it is really very -- it makes the decision making around
▶ 2:32:51Mr. Intrator: Infrastructure challenging. As far as the permitting goes, whenever this topic comes up, the discussion around permitting is excruciating. It is excruciating from the ability to quickly build and to build large.
▶ 2:33:09Mr. Intrator: I think that is kind of from the data center forward, without even beginning the discussion from the data center back through the energy infrastructure that is necessary to be able to power these large investments at the scale that make them of relevance to moving artificial intelligence forward. I am happy to spend more time digging into more details but I will probably do that directly.
▶ 2:33:36Sen. Lummis: I will look forward to the conversation. I am worried about wyoming's very clean natural gas being something your industry is concerned about because president likes natural gas but president biden didn't. If you build huge data centers and another president comes along who is anti-natural gas, that is a concern for you as if you are deciding how to deploy capital.
▶ 2:34:08Sen. Lummis: Mr. smith, do you agree?
▶ 2:34:09Mr. Smith: Generally, I do. We need consistency across administrations. We need to find more opportunities for bipartisan agreement. I will highlight that in cheyenne, where we have long had a complex, we have a backup generators that run on natural gas. There are a variety of ways for us to put different energy supplies to good use.
▶ 2:34:37Sen. Lummis: Are you exploring small modular nuclear?
▶ 2:34:41Mr. Smith: Yes, including with people in wyoming.
▶ 2:34:45Sen. Lummis: Thank you. Mr. altman, I am pleased to hear -- my time is up, excuse me. It goes so fast.
▶ 2:34:56Mr. Altman: We are very excited.
▶ 2:34:59Chair Cruz: Senator rosen.
▶ 2:35:03Sen. Rosen: Thank you, senator cruz. Time does go by very fast. Thank you for having this hearing. I believe in the promise of ai. It is so exciting. We have to ask the right questions to promote its growth on one hand and how to create these new possibilities and pathways and how we protect ourselves from bad actors or outcomes as best we can. Mr.
▶ 2:35:31Sen. Rosen: Altman, thank you for spending some time with us yesterday. I will start a little bit today. In february I introduced bipartisan legislation with senator husted to prohibit the use of deepseek on government devices. Senator cassidy and I introduced a bill that would expand the prohibitions to include federal contractors. Mr.
▶ 2:35:58Sen. Rosen: Smith, what should our approach be to ai models developed in adversarial countries like the prc? Should we be concerned about our adversaries co-opting ai? How are you combating this?
▶ 2:36:16Mr. Smith: I think you can take the deepseek example. Deepseek produced two things. They have a model that is an open-source model, and they have an application, the deepseek app. At microsoft we do not allow our employees to use the deepseek app.
▶ 2:36:37Mr. Smith: We did not put the deepseek app in our app store because of the concerns you mentioned -- mainly data going back to china and the apt creating the kinds of content that were associated with chinese propaganda.
▶ 2:36:53Mr. Smith: At the same time, because the model itself is an open source model, it was possible for us to go in, analyze it and change the code in the model, which we and other people have permission to do, to remove the harmful side effects. We have to always think about the different aspects of the technology. I will say put security first. And then go forward from there.
▶ 2:37:22Sen. Rosen: The data is the real power in our current world. He, she, or whomever owns the data can control a lot of what we do. I want to move on and speak with you, Mr. altman, about ai and antisemitism. Adl released a report showing several major generative ai models have supported tropes and security theories.
▶ 2:37:52Sen. Rosen: What steps is industry taking to ensure that ai models do not perpetuate antisemitism? Would you consider collaborating to create a standard benchmark for ai related to anti-semitism and use it as a form of evaluation?
▶ 2:38:10Mr. Altman: Of course, we do collaborate on this topic. We are excited to continue to do so. We want our users to have freedom to use models to where they want but we do not want them to be damaging to the fabric of society. There will always be some debate. The question of free speech in the context of ai is novel and different from what we faced before.
▶ 2:38:41Mr. Altman: I would see these as tools for users one on one. But of course we are not here to make horrible, anti-semitic products.
▶ 2:38:49Sen. Rosen: Thank you. I want to move on -- senator lujan talked about energy center data use and water use. I want to put on top of that a little bit about data center security, add that to the mix. I got a bill passed into law, bipartisan federal data center law enhancement act. It establishes cyber security and resiliency standards for federal data centers. To Mr. smith -- I am sorry, Dr.
▶ 2:39:20Sen. Rosen: Su, thank you. I want to ask you a little bit about hardware. Are there ways that hardware, new chips we are hoping to think about -- I know my career as a software developer, we know things have gotten smarter faster in the cooler they can be, the better we can compute.
▶ 2:39:46Sen. Rosen: How can we make our chips cooler, or computing power more secure? I know interoperability is sometimes a factor.
▶ 2:39:58Dr. Su: Thank you for the question. I think all of those things are extremely important. In our part of the energy efficiency power constraints we have from a chips standpoint, our job is to continue to make our chips more and more efficient every year. We have seen 30 times improvement over the last few years and we will continue to focus in that area.
▶ 2:40:28Dr. Su: To your comments about security ensuring our chips are secure and people are not somehow breaking in, those are also very high priorities and our overall development cycle for future generation chips.
▶ 2:40:41Sen. Rosen: Thank you. I look forward to working with all of you again.
▶ 2:40:45Chair Cruz: Senator sullivan.
▶ 2:40:47Sen. Sullivan: Thank, Mr. chairman. I agree with senator cruz's opening statement about this being up matter of national economics, and national security in terms of our race, competition with china. I know this topic has been pressed but I want to dig down a little deeper.
▶ 2:41:16Sen. Sullivan: Do you agree with that, all of you? I will ask some quick questions. This is a huge issue of national security relative to china and we as american need to win in that regard. Everybody nodding their head? It is the consensus among the witnesses that we are ahead right now but it is a tentative lead?
▶ 2:41:45Sen. Sullivan: Very quickly, we will start with you, Mr. altman. What is your assessment on that? I want to set the context for some questions.
▶ 2:41:53Mr. Altman: I believe we are leading the world right now and will continue to do so. We want to make ai in the united states and have the whole world get the benefit of that. It is the right thing to do for all the people of the world. I really appreciate you being with us here today because we will need your help. Almost everything you are saying sounds great.
▶ 2:42:15Sen. Sullivan: As I ask this question, I will ask if you think we are ahead, but the key things when you say "we need your help," sometimes we are not so smart up here, what would the key things be that you would need from the U.S. government to help us maintain that lead, and dominate this space? Mr. altman again?
▶ 2:42:41Mr. Altman: We have talked about infrastructure but we cannot overstate how important that is. Having the supply chain in the united states. Previous technological -- ar is different in terms of the magnitude of resources we need. Projects like stargate in the U.S., things like bringing chip manufacturing and design to the U.S. permitting power. These. .
▶ 2:43:10Mr. Altman: Are critical if we do not get this right I don't think anything else we do can be right. On the model creation side we have talked about the need for certainty and our ability to train and to be on fair footing with the rest of the world to remain competitive. The ability to offer products under a reasonable and fair regulatory framework so we can win in the market. The products will be so key to the feedback loops and making them better and better.
▶ 2:43:40Mr. Altman: The ability to deploy them and win at the product level. It is really quite important. The ability to bring the most talented people in the world here, the most talented researchers. We should try to get them all here. Those are some of the specifics.
▶ 2:44:00Sen. Sullivan: Good. That is very helpful. Mr. smith, two other ones I want to touch on, I agree with the other senators, one of our advantages over china in my view has to be energy. All of the above energy. Alaska, we have a very large-scale lng project I think we will get off the ground. We have been working on it for a long time.
▶ 2:44:28Sen. Sullivan: We will have a 100-year supply of natural gas. We want you to come up to alaska with our data centers. We have a lot of cold weather, we have gas, wind, water, we have it all. Come on up. When this project is done, 100-year gas supply, a little colder than texas. Two questions that relate to our competitive advantage. Mr.
▶ 2:44:57Sen. Sullivan: Smith and any others who want to jump in. Energy. Second, I think it is somewhat of a disadvantage, it frustrates me. Maybe you guys do not see this. We have at american finance companies, venture capital firms, banks, others that remarkably all the opportunities we have in america are helping fund some projects in china.
▶ 2:45:24Sen. Sullivan: I have been a staunch opponent of americans who have opportunities to invest in other places investing in chinese ai, chinese quantum. We all know they will use that to improve their military. I was reading about benchmark capital. They evidently did a $75 million round for nai company in china. Is that another problem?
▶ 2:45:51Sen. Sullivan: Advantage energy, problem american companies financing our competition.
▶ 2:45:57Mr. Smith I Would Connect: Three things -- energy, people and access to capital. The U.S. has huge resources but never underestimate the ability of china to build a lot of electrical power plants -- more and faster than any other country. We are better off going into that with the mindset we have to keep up and not take anything for granted.
▶ 2:46:22Mr. Smith I Would Connect: I would say the number one comparative advantage of the united states throughout the 50 years that have defined digital technology has been bringing the world's best people to our country and giving them access to venture capital. We should continue to -- I think you are right to ask where else is venture capital going?
▶ 2:46:45Mr. Smith I Would Connect: I will just say this -- if we can keep bringing the best people to the united states and keep educating the best people in the united states, I believe the money will be here to enable them to succeed. But let's make sure we are continuing to bring the best people in the world and giving them the opportunity to build great companies in the united states.
▶ 2:47:05Sen. Sullivan: American venture capital funds funding chinese ai, is that in our best interest?
▶ 2:47:14Mr. Smith: I recognize you are focused on that. I will keep saying, bring the people here, they will have access to the money and we will out-compete the world.
▶ 2:47:26Chair Cruz: Senator moran.
▶ 2:47:29Sen. Moran: I would like to talk about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence could help us combat climate change by improving weather forecasts and better predictive power supply and demand. Designing and training and deploying a e-models also poses real risk.
▶ 2:47:52Sen. Moran: The massive data centers critical for ai development require substantial amounts of electricity, putting stress on the grid and raising costs. They generate significant heat. Cooling them requires large volumes of water in regions already facing droughts because of climate change.
▶ 2:48:18Sen. Moran: Some areas have backup generators that can increase the risk of cancer. The truth is we know too little about the environmental costs and benefits of ai. Mr. smith, do you agree it would be helpful for the government to do a comprehensive study on the impact of artificial intelligence?
▶ 2:48:42Mr. Smith: One study was completed last december.
▶ 2:48:47Sen. Markey: Do you think it would be helpful for the government to convene stakeholders, including from industry and academia, to help better measure ai's environmental impact?
▶ 2:49:00Mr. Smith: Yes there is a role to be played.
▶ 2:49:05Sen. Markey: Do you agree the federal government should help study the environmental impact of ai?
▶ 2:49:11Mr. Altman: Studying is usually a good thing. I think the conversation about the environmental impact of ai and the relative challenges and benefits has gotten somewhat out of whack. I am hopeful ai -- we have been trying to address climate and environment of challenges unsuccessfully. I think we need help. I think ai can help us do that. We are in the process of building a 10 gigawatt facility.
▶ 2:49:39Sen. Markey: My question is should the federal government be on an ongoing basis studying ai?
▶ 2:49:47Mr. Altman: Could be helpful.
▶ 2:49:49Sen. Markey: That is why this congress introduced the act that studies the positive and negative consequences of ai. As the technology continues to develop and models become more efficient and we build up infrastructure, we need to do it. Ai might find a cure for cancer. It might. Ai could also help contribute to a climate disaster. That is also equally true.
▶ 2:50:21Sen. Markey: We need to keep both of those things on the table, especially as the trump administration is ignoring the fact that last year 94% of all new energy capacity in the united states was wind or solar battery and trump said he will destroy all incentives for continuation of that. That is something you have to weigh in on. I look forward to working with you on that.
▶ 2:50:49Sen. Markey: I want to turn to ai's impact on disadvantaged communities. We are not just talking about artificial intelligence to write emails or plan a grocery list, it is used to calculate a family's mortgage, a job application and determine a senior's medical care. It is essential that ai powered algorithms are free from bias and discrimination. Mr. smith, can algorithms be biased and cause discrimination?
▶ 2:51:18Mr. Smith: They can which is why we tested to avoid the outcome.
▶ 2:51:25Sen. Markey: Same question to Mr. outcome.
▶ 2:51:27Mr. Altman: Of course.
▶ 2:51:29Sen. Markey: Mr. altman, does openai work to guard against such bias and discrimination?
▶ 2:51:38Mr. Altman: Of course.
▶ 2:51:40Sen. Markey: I'm glad to hear that because you recently stated the government should not implement privacy regulations on ai but instead respond very quickly as problems emerge. I am very deeply worried about that approach. We do not need to wait and see a poorly tested and trained algorithm will harm marginalized communities.
▶ 2:52:06Sen. Markey: Artificial intelligence is already supercharging the bias and discrimination prevalent in our society. Biased algorithms mean black and brown families are less likely to obtain a mortgage. People with disabilities are less likely to be recommended for a job opening. It means women are less likely to receive scholarships for higher education. These are real harms happening right now. It is congress' job to address the existing problems that become with ai.
▶ 2:52:38Sen. Markey: On the proud author of the ai civil rights act which would ensure that companies review and eliminate bias and discrimination in their algorithms before developing and deploying them. It has to happen simultaneously. It will hold companies accountable when their algorithms cause harm against marginalized population. I will be fighting to ensure ai does not stand for accelerating inequality in our nation.
▶ 2:53:08Sen. Markey: All of the protections we have in the real world should be moved to the virtual world. Women, black, brown, communities with disabilities, lgbtq community, we have to build in protections against that bias up front otherwise the same discriminatory practices will just migrate immediately and the responsibility for the industry will be to work to make sure we put the protections on. Thank you.
▶ 2:53:37Chair Cruz: Senator peters.
▶ 2:53:40Sen. Peters: Thank, Mr. chairman and thank you to all of our witnesses. It is an incredibly important topic and we appreciate your expertise. As we are looking at making sure the united states is the world leader in ai, we talked about supply chains and infrastructure and all those aspects. One area I want to focus on his workforce and people to make sure we have the talent.
▶ 2:54:08Sen. Peters: That is what I authored the ai scholarship for service act and the ai training act. Both were signed into law in 2022. Earlier this year I introduced my ai and critical technology workforce framework act to continue the effort along those lines and hope to work with each of you as we look at other legislation necessary to make sure we have the workforce trained to take advantage of this amazing technology.
▶ 2:54:35Sen. Peters: I want to do a shout out to the university of michigan that became the first university in the world to provide generative ai tools for their entire student body to prepare them for the workforce of tomorrow. I want to talk a little bit about the workforce. Mr. altman, when we met last year in my office and had a great conversation, you said upwards of 70% of jobs could be eliminated by ai. You acknowledged the possible social disruption of this.
▶ 2:55:06Sen. Peters: We have to prepare for it -- we will not stand in the way of incredible opportunities but if this will indeed occur we need to think deeply about how that will be managed and make sure everyone could benefit from ai, not just a select few. Talk to me about how you believe leaders in your industry can help mitigate job losses or deal with what could -- as you described -- major social disruption.
▶ 2:55:35Mr. Altman: The thing that is different this time is the potential speed. Technological revolutions have impacted jobs and the economy for a long time. Some jobs go away, some jobs get created, many jobs get more efficient and people can earn more money and that is great. Over some period of time, society can adapt to a huge market job change. You can see how much that has happened over the last century.
▶ 2:56:05Mr. Altman: I do not know if anyone knows how exactly it will happen but it could be pretty fast. The most important thing -- or one of the most important things we can do is to put tools in the hands of people. We want people to be getting used to this technology as it is developed. We have been doing this for almost five years since our first product launch.
▶ 2:56:32Mr. Altman: As society and technology coevolved, putting great capable tools in the hands of a lot of people and letting them figure out and what they will create for each other and come up with and provide value back to the world on top of this new building block we have with the scaffolding of society, that is the best thing we can do as openai and are industry help with the transition.
▶ 2:56:57Sen. Peters: We want to get to the point where ai is not displacing work but enhancing work. People are more productive and doing things we cannot even imagine.
▶ 2:57:11Mr. Altman: I do not think we can imagine the jobs of the other side of this. If you look at programming today -- that is what I will pick because it is programming a near and dear to my heart -- what it means to be an effective programmer in may of 2025 is very different than what it was the last time I was here in may of 2023. These tools have changed what a programmer is capable of. The amount of code and software the world will get.
▶ 2:57:40Mr. Altman: It is not like people do not hire software engineers anymore, they work in a different way and they are more productive.
▶ 2:57:46Sen. Peters: Dr. su, we talk about open source ai. Most of the conversation has been about software. Making technology open and being able to work together matters in every level from the chips that power the devices to the servers running behind the scenes.
▶ 2:58:04Sen. Peters: My question for you is what are the benefits of open standards at the hardware level and what are the implications for innovation, national security and resilience in the supply chain?
▶ 2:58:17Dr. Su: Thank you for the question. There are an incredible number of advantages with an open ecosystem with the hardware and software. There is no one organization or group that has all the good ideas. Enabling the ecosystem to work together so you can choose the best solution at every level and also optimization across a broad set of constituents is a good thing.
▶ 2:58:45Dr. Su: It is very good from a security standpoint to ensure there are many choices so we are not dependent on a single ecosystem. We continue to be very forward thinking with open standards and open ecosystems.
▶ 2:59:00Sen. Peters: Your model is an open model. I understand nvidia is a closed model. What are the advantages and disadvantages?
▶ 2:59:08Dr. Su: The major advantage in an open model and something we bring much support is the idea we can have innovation come from many different parties. Whether that is hardware innovation -- the different shapes -- or system innovation, putting all these things together. Our goal is to make sure we always have the best of the best and there are many different parties that can contribute to that. That is why we are very forward leaning.
▶ 2:59:36Sen. Peters: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:59:40Chair Cruz: Senator fetterman.
▶ 2:59:43Sen. Fetterman: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Mr. smith, I am a big supporter of energy. For me, energy security is national security. Renewable is about that. It goes to other things, as well, too. That also includes nuclear. Nuclear is important. There is an energy transition.
▶ 3:00:10Sen. Fetterman: My focus is making sure pennsylvania is not hit too hard. The washington post reported increasing electricity demand for the data centers is going to raise up presidential power bills by 20%. To me, but is a concern and for pennsylvania families.
▶ 3:00:34Sen. Fetterman: The data center has important jobs during construction and that is a great thing, of course. But they are not long-term. The rate, those rates might last longer. I have been tracking the plan to reopen tmi. My own personal story is I had to grab my hamster and evacuate during the meltdown in 1979.
▶ 3:01:05Sen. Fetterman: You might assume I was anti-nuclear. I am very supportive of nuclear because that is an important part of the stack. If you really want to address climate change, you cannot turn your back on nuclear, in my opinion. That is the power of microsoft's data center.
▶ 3:01:25Sen. Fetterman: If you are able to commit to the power purchase agreement will not raise bills for pennsylvania families.
▶ 3:01:37Mr. Smith: You raise a critical point. We have two principles we follow. Number one, we will invest to bring onto the grid the amount of electricity that equals the amount of electricity we will use so we will not tap into a constricted supply. Number 2, we will manage all of this in a way that ensures our activity does not raise the price of electricity to the community.
▶ 3:02:06Mr. Smith: I was describing earlier how if there are improvements that need to be made to the grid, as there often are, we will go to the utility commission and we will propose a change in the rate that we are charged so we can pay for that improvement. I think it is a fact of life. You highlight something critical. There are a lot of jobs in the construction takes place, there are jobs afterward but not as many.
▶ 3:02:33Mr. Smith: One will wear out the welcome quickly if we tax, in effect, the neighborhood by asking everyone to pay more for their electricity because we have arrived. We get it. We know we have to be a good and responsible member of the neighborhood.
▶ 3:02:49Sen. Fetterman: Thank you. One of the perks of being a senator, for me, anyway, I get an opportunity to meet people who have more impressive jobs or careers than I have led. Mr. altman, I will count this as a highlight. The work you have done, you are one of the people moving ai. I was excited to meet you.
▶ 3:03:21Sen. Fetterman: People asked me, if you are going to talk about ai. And now I get to ask you, the literal expert, some people are worried about ai or whatever -- what about the singularity? If you would address that, please.
▶ 3:03:38Mr. Altman: Thank you for the kind words and normalizing hoodies in more places. I love to see that. I am incredibly excited about the rate of progress but I also am cautious and I would say, I don't know, I feel small next to it. It is beyond something we all yet fully understand where it will go.
▶ 3:04:09Mr. Altman: I believe this will turn out to be the biggest technological revolution humanity will ever produce. I feel privileged to be here. I feel curious and interested in what will happen. But I do think things will change quite substantially. I think humans have a wonderful ability to adapt. Things that seem amazing will become the new normal very quickly.
▶ 3:04:35Mr. Altman: We will figure out how to use these tools to do things we have never done before and it will be quite extraordinary. These are going to be tools capable of things we cannot quite wrap our heads around. As these tools start helping us to create future iterations, some people call that singularity, some people call the takeoff. Whatever it is, it feels like a new era. It is tremendously exciting we get to live through that and we can make in a wonderful thing.
▶ 3:05:07Mr. Altman: But we have to approach it with humility and some caution.
▶ 3:05:10Sen. Fetterman: For me, it has been -- I get a chance to ask questions to a lot of edisons, the things in which you are involved will transform our society and people will look back 50, 60 years ago and see what happens. Over to the chairman, thank you.
▶ 3:05:34Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator fetterman.
▶ 3:05:37Sen. Klobuchar: You guys have been sitting here so long that the pope has been chosen. [laughter] we don't know who.
▶ 3:05:48Chair Cruz: Congratulations, amy.
▶ 3:05:54Sen. Klobuchar: [laughter] you are welcome. It probably would not work. I left for some other things and came back. I have a question I wanted to ask and it is related to the deepfake issue.
▶ 3:06:10Sen. Klobuchar: Senator blackburn and senator coons and senator tillis and I worked on this really hard -- we have recently seen deepfake videos of al rocher promoting a cure for high blood pressure, a deepfake of brad pitt asking for money from a hospital bed.
▶ 3:06:31Sen. Klobuchar: Sony music has worked with platforms to remove 75,000 songs with unauthorized deepfakes, including voices of harry styles, beyond sick. It is not just famous people. -- harry styles, beyonce. I talked about what is going on with a digital replica. There is a real concern indicates that what we were talking about earlier with a news bill.
▶ 3:07:02Sen. Klobuchar: I wanted to make you aware of this legislation. Now we have a coalition, including youtube, supporting it, as well as the recording industry association, motion picture association, sag-aftra. It is a big deal. I'm hoping it is something you will all look at. Could you just comment -- I would go to you Mr.
▶ 3:07:28Sen. Klobuchar: Smith first -- about protecting people from having their likenesses replicated through ai without permission? Even if you all pledged to do it our obvious concern is there will be other companies that wouldn't. As we look at these guardrails, the protection of digital -- people's digital rights should be a part of this.
▶ 3:07:50Mr. Smith: You are right to point to it. It has become a growing area of concern. During the presidential election last year, both campaigns, both political parties were concerned about the potential for deepfakes to be created. We worked to address that. We see it being used in ways that I would call abusive. Including of celebrities and the like.
▶ 3:08:20Mr. Smith: I think it starts with an ability to identify when something has been created by ai and is not a genuine photographic or video image. We do find that ai is much more capable at doing that then the human eye for human judgment. I think it is right there should be certain guardrails. Some we can apply voluntarily. We have been doing that across the industry, including openai and microsoft.
▶ 3:08:53Mr. Smith: There are certain uses that probably should be considered across the line and should be unlawful. I think that is where the kind of initiatives you are describing have a particularly important role to play.
▶ 3:09:03Sen. Klobuchar: Could you look at that legislation?
▶ 3:09:06Mr. Smith: Absolutely.
▶ 3:09:08Sen. Klobuchar: Mr. altman, same question.
▶ 3:09:11Mr. Altman: Of course we would be happy to look at the legislation. This is a big issue. I think there are a few areas to talk about. Ai that generates content, how takedowns work, how we educate society. I do not believe it will be possible to stop the generation of the content.
▶ 3:09:36Mr. Altman: Open source models are a great thing on the whole and something we need to pursue but it does mean there will be a lot of models floating around the can do this. The mass distribution, it is possible to put more guardrails in place and that seems important. I do not want to neglect the societal education piece. With every new technology there is always some sort of new scam that comes.
▶ 3:10:08Mr. Altman: We can get people to understand this and I think that would be better. People are very understanding the content can be ai generated and building defenses in their own minds. If you get a call and it sounds exactly like someone you know and they said they need help or you see a video, this gets at us in a very deep and psychological way. We need to build societal resilience because this is coming.
▶ 3:10:36Sen. Klobuchar: It is coming but there has to be some ways.
▶ 3:10:41Mr. Altman: We should do everything.
▶ 3:10:43Sen. Klobuchar: Privacy, rights, you have to have some way of enforcing it -- there will not be consequences.
▶ 3:10:51Mr. Altman: Bad actors do not always follow the law. We need an additional shield.
▶ 3:10:57Sen. Klobuchar: I look forward to working with you on it. Thank you.
▶ 3:11:01Chair Cruz: I have to say, senator klobuchar's question about fakes and ai fakes made me feel guilty because I did tweet out an ai generated picture of senator fetterman as the pope of greenland. It may be a real thing.
▶ 3:11:23Sen. Klobuchar: Parody is allowed under the law. That is different than what I'm talking about but senator fetterman should respond. [laughter]
▶ 3:11:35Chair Cruz: It is a good shot, actually. I have a few more questions and then we will wrap up. Mr. altman, what has been the most surprising use for it chatgpt echo what are applications you are seeing that are surprising?
▶ 3:11:58Mr. Altman: People message chatgpt billions of times a day. I will tell one personal story. I recently had a newborn. I do not know how people figure out how to take care of newborns without chatgpt. It has been a real lifesaver.
▶ 3:12:17Chair Cruz: I will tell you a story I have told you before. My teenage daughter several months ago sent me a long detailed text that was emotional and well written. I commented that it was well-written and she said I used chatgpt. Wait, you are texting your dad -- there is something about the new generation that is so seamlessly integrated into life.
▶ 3:12:44Chair Cruz: She sends in email and does not hesitate to think about going to chatgpt to capture her thoughts.
▶ 3:12:50Mr. Altman: I have complicated feelings about that.
▶ 3:12:54Chair Cruz: [laughter] use the app and tell me what your feelings are. Google just revealed that their search traffic on safari declined for the first time ever.
▶ 3:13:10Mr. Altman: They did not send me a christmas card.
▶ 3:13:14Chair Cruz: Will chatgpt replace google as the primary search engine? If so, when?
▶ 3:13:24Mr. Altman: Probably not. Some use cases people use search engines for today are definitely better on chatgpt. Google is a ferocious competitor. They have a very strong ai team, a lot of infrastructure. A very well protected business. They are making great progress.
▶ 3:13:49Chair Cruz: Question that I have spent a lot of time talking to business leaders, ceos in the tech space, ai, one question I asked that I get different answers how big a deal was deepseek?
▶ 3:14:11Chair Cruz: A major, seismic, shocking development from china, not that big a deal, somewhere in between? What is coming next?
▶ 3:14:20Mr. Altman: Not a huge deal. There are a few things. One is they made a global search, and the others that they made a consumer app. The most downloaded ai jewel -- tool.
▶ 3:14:39Mr. Altman: There are going to be a lot of good open source models and the people at deepseek during great research and I expect more models to come and our colleagues have great models, too.
▶ 3:14:51Mr. Altman: On the consumer app, I think if the deepseek consumer app looked like he was going to be chatgpt and our american colleagues' apps as the default ai systems -- but that is not currently the to us like it is happening. >> I would say it is somewhere in between, chairman cruz.
▶ 3:15:18Mr. Altman: When he think about what we learned, what we learned is there are different ways of doing things. We have lots of incredibly innovative people in the united states. American models are the best by far. However, when you have constraints that are placed, there are other ways of doing things. The open-source nature of deepseek was one of the things that was most impactful just in terms of how much can be done in an open source type of model an open ecosystem.
▶ 3:15:49Mr. Altman: Clearly the united states is leading and we need to continue to accelerate innovation and adoption as you start this year. >> I think deepseek did a lot of things.
▶ 3:16:04Mr. Altman: One of the things he did was -- it did was it sort of raised the specter of china's ai capability to a much broader audience that was perhaps focused on prior to that. So you saw that reverberate through the financial markets. Some broad-based reaction.
▶ 3:16:29Mr. Altman: Suddenly everyone knows what deepseek is in that china is not theoretically in the race, but is actually very much a formidable competitor. It was a starting gun in some ways for the broader population and maybe the broader consciousness of the fact that this is not a fait accompli, and
▶ 3:17:00Mr. Altman: That we are going to have to as america together to kind of compel our solutions followed. I think that was one of the lasting impact that we will see from it.
▶ 3:17:13Mr. Smith: I would say, like lisa, somewhere in between. It wasn't shocking. It was one of a number of startups that we were following in china that we saw as having the potential to be innovative in this space. I do think there is really interesting and important point that constraints encourage innovation in other ways.
▶ 3:17:38Mr. Smith: I just think one of the interesting facts about deepseek is that of their 200 or more employees can that was their size when they released these models, almost all of their employees by design work for years or less -- were four years or less out of university. They wanted to hire people who were not --
▶ 3:18:11Chair Cruz: So the kids are taking over the world.
▶ 3:18:13Mr. Smith: They do every generation. [laughter]
▶ 3:18:15Chair Cruz: Related -- where you finished with that, Mr. smith? Related to that, we talked at the outset about the ai diffusion rule being rescinded, which I'm glad.
▶ 3:18:29Chair Cruz: I think it was a bad role, overly complex, it put on the number of trading partners and service urchins can so I'm glad the president is -- unfair restrictions, so I'm glad the president is rescinding it. That doesn't mean there should be no restrictions. There is a variety of views on what the rule should be concerning ai diffusion. Nvidia has argued we want american ships everywhere, even in china.
▶ 3:18:59Chair Cruz: American ships everywhere, even in china. Others have argued we should restrict the most advanced processors. I'm curious, each of the four of you can what do you think the rules should be if anything to replace the ai diffusion rule? Mr. altman, I will start with you.
▶ 3:19:16Mr. Altman: I was also glad to see that rescinded. I agree there will need to be some constraints, but I think if the mental model is winning division instead of stopping diffusion that directionally seems right. It doesn't mean there is no guardrails and we will build a big data center in the U.S. our intention is to build the justin best data centers to train in the U.S. but then we do want to build centers with our partners around the world.
▶ 3:19:47Mr. Altman: I think I think that will be good. To this point, the influence comes from people adopting U.S. products and services up-and-down. Most obviously defeat they are using chatgpt versus deepseek also using U.S. chips and all the amazing stuff microsoft does. That is a w in for us. We should embrace that, but make sure that the critical of these models should start here.
▶ 3:20:16Chair Cruz: Dr. su?
▶ 3:20:19Ms. Su: We would totally agree with the concept that some restrictions are necessary. This is a matter of national security as much as it is about ai diffusion. That being the case, we were happy to see the rescinding as well and we see this as an opportunity to simplify. We talked about the need for widespread adoption of technology in our ecosystem.
▶ 3:20:44Ms. Su: Simple rules that can be easily applied, that really allow our allies to protect our technology while still utilizing the best of while still utilizing the best that the united states has to offer is a good start in terms of where we are going. This is an area where the devil is in the details and it requires a lot of balance.
▶ 3:21:05Ms. Su: From an industry standpoint it is our job to put on the broader hat and work hand-in-hand with the administration and congress to make our best recommendations and so it is a policy that has stability as we go forward as well.
▶ 3:21:19Chair Cruz: Mr. intrator.
▶ 3:21:26Mr. Intrator: I will echo what sam and lisa said. National security is paramount. When to address the limitations around national security, the opportunity to -- once you address the limitations around national security, the opportunity to work with regulators to particular regulatory framework beyond that makes a lot of sense, and the diffusion rule will allow us that opportunity to participate feeling we will come away with what will be an optimal outcome at this point.
▶ 3:21:55Chair Cruz: Mr. smith?
▶ 3:21:58Mr. Smith: I think we have all discussed the right recipe -- simplified, eliminate these tier-two quantitative research and that undermine access to american technology, but enable even the most advanced gpu's the country has to be exported to data centers that are run by a trusted provider, that major and security standards, both physical and cyber security standards, that they are protections against diversion of the chips, and that there are
▶ 3:22:31Mr. Smith: Precautions against certain uses. That means two things. One is that there are controls in place to make sure that pla, the chinese military isn't accessing and using these advanced models or advanced chips. Regardless of the country that it is in.
▶ 3:22:53Mr. Smith: And that there are certain hard for uses that one should want to preclude, like using a model to create the next pandemic, a biological weapon, a nuclear weapon. I think there is an approach that is coming together that can be retained and can move forward and that strikes the right balance.
▶ 3:23:10Chair Cruz: Final question for interview data -- for each of you, would you support a 10-year learning period on states issuing some, brains of regulation or level playing field for developers and employer's?
▶ 3:23:30Mr. Altman: I'm not sure what the 10-year learning period, means but having one federal approach sounds good to me.
▶ 3:23:41Ms. Su: Aligned federal approach with thoughtful regulation would be very much appreciated.
▶ 3:23:52Mr. Intrator: I agree with both my colleagues.
▶ 3:23:56Mr. Smith: That builds on the op-ed that you and senator graham published last year. Giving the country time, your example, does this work for the internet, there is a lot of details that need to be hammered out. Giving the federal government the ability to lead, especially in areas around product safety and prerelease reviews and the like, would help this industry grow.
▶ 3:24:23Chair Cruz: I want to thank each of the witnesses. This was a very interesting hearing. It was informative. These issues matter. You saw a great deal of interest on both sides of the aisle on this topic. I appreciate each of you are very busy and doing a lot of things and I appreciate you being here today. Senators will have until the close of business on thursday, may 15, to submit questions for the record, and the witnesses will have until the end of the day on thursday, may 29, respond to those questions.
▶ 3:24:54Chair Cruz: With that, that concludes today's hearing. The committee stands adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]