Artificial intelligence industry leaders who have openly stated a willingness to work on the emerging technology with China will testify to Congress on Thursday, likely facing a panel of U.S. senators urging them to instead pivot away from the global adversary.
At the Senate hearing put together by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), “Winning the AI Race: Strengthening U.S. Capabilities in Computing and Innovation,” China is almost certainly going to be a central topic of discussion. When Cruz announced the hearing, he emphasized the competitive stakes in this global tech competition: “The way to beat China in the AI race is to outrace them in innovation, not saddle AI developers with European-style regulations.”
Cruz and his Senate colleagues will have the opportunity to grill industry leaders who are open to working with China, including: Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft Corporation; Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI; and Lisa Su, CEO of semiconductor company AMD.
For decades, Microsoft has maintained a “presence” in China, where co-founder Bill Gates once said there was an opportunity to tap into a “deep pool of intellectual talent.” Even after considering the risks of working on powerful technologies in China, the company kept it as a research hub.
Meta secretly helped China advance AI, ex-Facebooker will tell Congress
Meta whistleblower can testify to Congress despite gag order on press interviews.
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a former Facebook employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams, will testify to Congress that Meta executives “repeatedly” sought to “undermine US national security and betray American values” in “secret” efforts to “win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion dollar business in China.”
In her prepared remarks, which will be delivered at a Senate subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism hearing this afternoon, Wynn-Williams accused Meta of working “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). That partnership allegedly included efforts to “construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics” as well as provide the CCP with “access to Meta user data—including that of Americans.”
Wynn-Williams worked as Facebook’s Director of Global Public Policy from 2011 to 2017. She left at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, just before Mark Zuckerberg got grilled by Congress over misinformation and election interference on its platform.
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