'Who's Winning—America Or China?': Ted Cruz Questions Sam Altman About AI Race

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At Thursday's Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other top AI leaders.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. You know, Senator Klobuchar asked whether AI will lead us to heaven

00:06or hell. It reminded me of a famous observation by Yale Law professor Grant

00:11Gilmore that in heaven there is no law and the lion will lie down with the lamb.

00:17In hell there is nothing but law and due process is meticulously observed. Let me

00:27ask you this, and this is to each of the four witnesses. In the race for AI, who's

00:35winning? America or China? If the answer is America, how close is China to us? And

00:42what do we do to make sure the answer remains America will win? Mr. Altman,

00:48we'll start with you. It is our belief that the American models, including some

00:55models from our company OpenAI and Google and others are the best models in the

00:59world. It's very hard to say how far ahead we are, but I would say not a huge amount

01:04of time. And I think to continue that leadership position and the influence

01:10that comes with that and that all of the incredible benefits of the

01:15world using American technology products and services, the things that my

01:20colleagues have spoken about here, the need to win in infrastructure, sensible

01:24regulation that does not slow us down, the sort of spirit of innovation and

01:28entrepreneurship that I think is a uniquely American thing in the world. None of this

01:34is rocket science. We just need to keep doing the things that have worked for so

01:37long and not make a silly mistake. Dr. Hsu? I'll answer in the realm of chips. I would

01:46say America is ahead in chips today. We have the best AI accelerators in the

01:52world. I think China, although they have restrictions given their ability to use

01:57advanced technologies, the one thing that's very important for us all to

02:01remember is there are multiple ways to do things. You know, having the best chips is

02:04great, but even if you don't have the best chips, you can get a lot done. So I

02:09think this conversation about how far behind China is, they are certainly

02:13catching up because there are many ways to do things. I think relative to what we

02:17can do, I will continue to say really ensure that our spirit of innovation is

02:23allowed to work and that is having, you know, very supportive government policies

02:28to do that, having very consistent policies and allowing us to do what we do

02:32best, which is innovate at every layer of the stack. Mr. Trader? So I'll speak to it

02:41from the physical infrastructure and software stack to deliver that. America is

02:47ahead, but it is the Achilles heel from the perspective of the ability, as I

02:53started to, to, better? Sorry about that. So, so the, the ability to build very large

03:02solutions to the computing infrastructure component of this is an area that we're

03:09going to struggle with from a permitting and building large projects to be able

03:13to deliver the, the power to, to allow those building artificial intelligence to

03:18continue to move as fast as they can in, in the race that we're in. Mr. Smith? I think

03:24the United States has a lead today in what is a close race and a race that will

03:29likely remain close. The number one factor that will define whether the United

03:34States or China wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the

03:40rest of the world. This is a global market and it will be defined as

03:44technology markets typically are by network effects. 18% of the people of the

03:50world live in China, 4% live in the United States, 78% live somewhere else. The

03:56lesson from Huawei and 5G is whoever gets there first will be difficult to

04:02supplant. We need to export with the right kinds of controls. We need to win the

04:07trust of the rest of the world. We need to have the financial architecture that gets

04:12not only to the countries that are industrialized but the nation say across

04:17Africa where typically China and Huawei have done so well. So some of my

04:23colleagues have made reference to standards as, as something that is

04:28desirable. And I will say standards is often code word for regulations and

04:34indeed the EU stifling standards concerning the internet is what killed

04:40tech in Europe. We are seeing now state legislatures mimicking the EU such as

04:46California's SB 1047 which thankfully was overwhelmingly defeated but would have

04:52created essentially a California DMV for AI model registration. How harmful would it be to

05:01winning the race for AI if America goes down goes down the road of the EU and

05:07creates a heavy-handed prior approval government regulatory process for AI?

05:12I think that would be disastrous. To give a more specific answer to your previous

05:21question which I think touches on why it would be so bad, there are three key

05:27inputs to these AI systems. There's compute, all the infrastructure we're talking

05:31about, there's algorithms that we all do research on, and there's data. If you

05:38don't have any one of those, you cannot succeed in making the best models. And as

05:42Brad said, the way for America to influence the world here is to have the

05:46technology that people most want to use and most adopt. The world uses iPhones and

05:51Google and Microsoft products and that's wonderful. Like that's how we have our

05:55influence. We don't, we don't want that to stop happening. So systems that stop us on

06:00any of these areas, you know, if we, if we have, if we have rules about what data we can

06:04train on that are not competitive with the rest of the world, then things can fall

06:08apart. If we are not able to build the infrastructure, and particularly if we're

06:11not able to manufacture the chips in this country, the rules can fall apart. If we

06:15can't build the products that people want, that naturally win in the market, and I

06:18think people do want to use American products, we can make them the best. But

06:21if we're prevented from doing that, people will use a better product made from

06:24somebody else that doesn't have the sort of, you know, that is not stymied in the

06:29same way. So it is, I am nervous about standards being set too early. I'm totally

06:38fine, you know, at the position some of my colleagues took that standards, once the

06:42industry figures out what they should be, it's fine for them to be adopted by a

06:45government body and sort of made more official. But I believe the industry is

06:48moving quickly towards figuring out the right protocols and standards here, and we

06:53need the space to innovate and to move quickly. So if each of you could briefly

06:56answer that question, because my time's expired, so I want to be respectful of

06:59that. I agree with the comments. That's him. I agree, and I would just say, and I

07:08think the point you're making is, we have to be very careful not to have these

07:11pre-approval requirements, including at state levels, because that would really

07:17slow innovation in the country. I think that a patchwork of regulatory overlays

07:25will cause friction in in the ability to build and extend what we're doing.

07:34Thank you. Senator Curtis.

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