The Senate Judiciary subcommittee on intellectual property held a hearing Wednesday to examine concerns around patents and innovation, escalating lawmakers’ focus on a wide range of concerns they said the technology presents.
Concerns over how AI products are trained on language models, and how that affects artists and writers, were brought up by senators on both sides of the aisle during a Judiciary subcommittee hearing on AI threats last month.
At Wednesday’s hearing, concerns about intellectual property took center stage as lawmakers aim to balance how to regulate the industry while allowing the U.S. to remain globally competitive.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), the chair of the intellectual property subcommittee, said during the hearing it is “critical that we include IP considerations in ongoing AI regulatory frameworks.”
“We should change our patent eligibility laws so that we can protect critical AI innovations,” he said.
Ranking member of the subcommittee Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the U.S. needs to consider how to regulate in a way that ensures the nation remains a leader in the industry.
Mike Huppe, CEO of SoundExchange, a nonprofit collective rights management organization that collects and distributes digital performance royalties for sound recordings, told The Hill it is important for lawmakers to have an understanding of how AI systems work and the threats they pose.
“We’re at a point in time where thoughtful legislation and thoughtful guardrails and thoughtful regulation can have a real impact,” Huppe said.
“Now is the time to be having these discussions before AI gets too far away from us to have the impact we want those regulations to have,” Huppe added.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com on Thursday morning.
