WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) – Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren accused major AI companies of pushing the Trump administration to limit AI transparency rules in North America’s trade pact, arguing instead that regulators should have broader access to information about the companies’ models.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said the companies are lobbying for negotiators to weaken the ability of regulators to oversee AI companies via the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The agreement currently only requires disclosure of AI model details during government investigations.
In a letter dated Wednesday, Warren urged the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to resist those calls and to instead strengthen requirements that would give regulators across the region access to key information about AI models even absent a formal probe.
“Big Tech is advocating to update the USMCA to strengthen provisions that allow companies to hide their AI algorithms and source code from regulatory scrutiny, even as the potential
risks that AI poses to American families flow across borders and the need to regulate AI becomes increasingly evident,” she wrote.
Any revised agreement “should eliminate source code secrecy provisions that allow Big Tech companies to escape regulatory scrutiny,” she said. “It is crucial that governments have the tools they need to effectively protect their citizens against these harms,” she added.
The USTR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter, not previously reported, is part of a growing chorus of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for tougher AI regulation following a fresh round of examples of AI causing harm this week.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that a man has sued OpenAI after its AI chatbot directed him to ignore dangerous health symptoms.
OpenAI said on Tuesday that an autonomous agent powered by its advanced AI models went rogue during a security test and triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face.
The incident “underscores the critical need for clear, practical rules for advanced AI systems,” Republican Congressman Jay Obernolte said.
Industry trade groups have pressed the USTR to seek looser digital trade rules from America’s trading partners.
In a comment to the trade authority last October, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents AI giants Google and Meta described “forced disclosure of source code, algorithms, model weights and training data;” as “threats to the cross-border supply of AI services.”
In a separate comment to USTR that same month, the Telecoms Industry Association, which represents Apple and Amazon Web Services, said, “it is more important than ever that USTR push back against efforts by China and others to mandate source code disclosure.”
The groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Courtney Rozen and David Lawder in Washington; Editing by Kim Coghill)
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