During Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TX) questioned Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow at the R Street Institute, about maintaining artificial intelligence dominance.
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00:00Burchett for five minutes. Thank you, Chair Lady. As the 435th most powerful member of Congress,
00:06I have the honor of asking questions that have been asked at ad nauseum, but when I ask them,
00:13answer as if this was the first time you said, and the proper response is,
00:18Congressman Burchett, that is possibly the most incredibly intelligent question that's been asked
00:23of me. So at least my clips will show that, and the 12 people that are watching this thing are
00:28at home, they're probably not in my district anyway. They're probably in Marjorie's district.
00:35Anyway, Mr. Therer, did I get that name right? Right. All right. The majority of East Tennesseans,
00:43and frankly Tennesseans and Americans, are worried about their privacy being violated by
00:48government artificial intelligence programs. What do you think Congress can do to protect
00:53our privacy? And my biggest fear in all this is Congress. I mean, some of these cats up here
00:59still have eight-track tape players and they're 1972 AMC gremlins, and they're going to try to
01:04regulate AI. They can't hardly spell AI, and now we're going to regulate it. So. Well, Congressman,
01:10thank you for that excellent question. And as someone who used to grow up in a gremlin with an
01:16eight-track player, I feel great affinity for this question. So I think that obviously we need to make
01:23sure that privacy is protected in the digital age, and this Congress has struggled with how to get
01:29that done. Obviously, we've had a multi-year, multi-decade debate about baseline privacy legislation,
01:36and a great deal of bipartisan consensus exists that that should be a priority before you get to a lot of
01:41the other questions about how to regulate all the various specific concerns about AI. A lot of them
01:46go back to fundamental data privacy, data security issues. And so I think, you know, let's not put the
01:50cart before the horse. Let's think about getting that done first. I know that's something Congress is
01:54turning to next. Also, regards to China, how do we maintain our dominance in the AI sector? Any of y'all
02:04can answer that. I'll ask Mr. Thayer first, if that's okay in this. Well, a lot of it comes down to
02:09making sure that America diffuses first. We have wonderful products. We are essentially winning one part of
02:14the AI war but losing another. We're winning the part of developing really sophisticated, high-powered
02:19frontier models and other systems and applications, but the reality is that China may be winning the diffusion
02:23side of things, and this is why it's very, very essential that we not miss out on making sure we have
02:28partnerships and deals, multilateral, minilateral approaches. The administration's been trying to do this
02:33obviously recently, but this Congress should obviously make sure that we do everything we can to make sure
02:38American technology and products lead the world, because it's not just about competitive advantage,
02:42it's about our values. Our values are embedded in our products, and of course the Chinese Communist
02:46Party values are embedded in their products of, you know, control, surveillance, and lack of human rights.
02:50Yes, sir. We've got to do three things. Number one is we have to continue to out-innovate and out-maneuver
02:56China. Our platform should be the dominant global platform. Number two is we have to work with our allies and
03:01partners to spread our platforms to, you know, the global south and the rest of the world. And three,
03:06we've got to find ways to slow down China and make it impossible for them to deplore their capabilities
03:12and to use their capabilities against us. Can you give me that first one again? I can tell
03:16by your accent you're probably not from East Tennessee. I'm not, sir. I'm the only person in
03:21this room that's not speaking with an accent right now, so if you could say that first one again, brother.
03:25The first one, sir, was that we have to make sure that we out-innovate and out-maneuver China. Right.
03:31I'll just add, I agree with all the other panelists here and witnesses. I think that this is an infinite
03:37race. And the technology that is being discussed here today, AI, can essentially be wielded and
03:44constructed by any sort of group of smart people. And the planet grows smart people everywhere,
03:51every day. And I think that to the extent that we can be the ones that others follow, that we can be the
03:57ones whose software, whose hardware, whose foundation models others use. We will have the sort of
04:05dominant leadership position of how this whole planet evolves.
04:07Ma'am?
04:09Well, I would say that China's doing a very good job of figuring out how to defeat some of our security
04:17vulnerabilities. And I think that's one area that we have a significant, we have a ways to go, is to
04:23protect the infrastructure because North Korea and China and others are getting better and better at
04:29infiltrating and exploiting our vulnerabilities. Sir? I'm going to be contrary here. I think the
04:34U.S.-China arms race is an overblown metaphor. This is not the 1960s. This is not the Cold War.
04:40Science happens globally. The transformer model, invented by Google. It was published. Everyone uses it.
04:45Deep Seek. China comes up with this model. It's public. Everyone is innovating based on it. Ideas are flowing
04:51cross-border. The dominance is more companies than technology. So don't think about regulating the
05:01hardware, the software, the ideas. We can't do that. And this is not the kind of world where that happens.
05:06It really is the companies and what they're doing. It could be U.S. companies, European companies,
05:11Chinese companies, other companies. All right. Thank you. Chairlady, I yield back nothing.