ICYMI: Heinrich Featured in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the Founder and Co-Chair of the Senate Artificial Intelligence Caucus, was featured as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI. Heinrich is the only member of Congress included in the list.
TIME Magazine: Martin Heinrich, U.S. Senator for New Mexico, 100 Most Influential People in AI 2024, 09/05/2024.
Martin Heinrich | U.S. Senator for New Mexico
By Andrew R. Chow
New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich has long been a leader in AI legislation on the hill: He co-founded the AI Caucus in 2019 after observing the rapid development of machine learning. A couple of years later, when ChatGPT, Dall-E and similar AI tools exploded into the national consciousness, Heinrich says his fellow legislators started requesting meetings with him, asking, “What is the AI Caucus, and what do we need to know about this stuff?”
Now, Heinrich sits close to the center of many congressional AI efforts. He was a key member of the Senate AI Working Group that released a recommended roadmap for AI policy earlier this year. He’s the co-author of several AI-related bills, which attempt to tackle funding for dispersed AI research, the protection of journalists from having their work used by AI models without their consent, and the environmental impacts of AI.
Those bills are indicative of Heinrich’s approach as neither an AI doomer nor an accelerationist of the tech. He deeply believes in AI’s potential to push science and medicine forward and wants the American AI industry to continue apace, but also wants both strong regulatory protections. “It would be unwise to treat AI the way we did the internet and social media early on, and say, 'Oh, we can wait until later to implement some guardrails,'” Heinrich says. “This is very fast-moving technology, and the opportunities for great things are enormous, but the opportunities for abuse are also substantial.”
Background on Heinrich’s Leadership on AI:
Heinrich is among leading lawmakers in Congress spearheading bipartisan efforts on responsible AI policy. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan AI Caucus, which he established with former Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) in 2019. The Caucus aims to keep the United States at the forefront of responsible AI innovation while maintaining important ethical, safety, and privacy standards.
This Congress, Heinrich has maintained a lead role on Leader Schumer’s bipartisan AI working group to help shape policy centered around addressing the risks and harnessing the opportunities of AI.
Heinrich has also engaged with New Mexicans about his AI policy work. In October 2023, Heinrich joined acclaimed writer and producer George R.R. Martin and University of New Mexico Professor and Santa Fe Institute External Faculty Member Melanie Moses to explore the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in arts and culture and its impact on New Mexico's creative economy. In July, Heinrich highlighted the potential of AI with a group of Albuquerque small-business owners who are learning how to use artificial intelligence.
Heinrich has led a number of successful policy initiatives on AI in the Senate.
In July, Heinrich announced bipartisan passage of his Creating Resources for Every American To Experiment with Artificial Intelligence Act (CREATE AI Act) out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The CREATE AI Act establishes the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) as a shared national research infrastructure that provides AI researchers and students with greater access to the computational resources, data, and tools needed to develop safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence. The legislation now heads to the Senate Floor for consideration.
Heinrich previously worked to establish the National AI Research Resource Task Force (NAIRR) to develop a detailed roadmap for the development of a national AI resource for AI research and convened a group of technical experts across academia, government, and industry to develop a detailed roadmap for how the United States can build, deploy, govern, and sustain a national research cloud and associated research resources.
A recommendation to establish the NAIRR came from the final report of the National Security Commission on AI, and work done by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) significantly advanced the concept. Last year, the NAIRR Task Force released its final report with a roadmap for standing up a national research infrastructure that would broaden access to the resources essential to AI research and development. Heinrich recently included $30 million for NAIRR in the Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill.
In July, Heinrich advanced the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024 (DEFIANCE Act), legislation he cosponsored to hold accountable those responsible for the proliferation of nonconsensual, sexually-explicit “deepfake” images and videos. Heinrich also introduced the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED ACT), legislation to set new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating and detecting AI-generated content, protect journalists, actors, and artists against AI-driven theft, and hold violators accountable for abuses.
In August, Heinrich partnered with U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) to introduce bipartisan legislation that would establish regulatory guardrails at financial regulatory agencies for regulated entities to test AI projects, allowing them to experiment with cutting-edge technologies in a safe way.
In 2020, Heinrich helped secure the most significant advancements for AI ever. The FY21 National Defense Authorization Act included a modified version of his Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act, a national strategy aimed at bolstering U.S. leadership in AI research and development. This legislation also included the bipartisan National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act to establish National AI Research Institutes at universities across the country.
Additionally, Heinrich helped pass the Artificial Intelligence for the Armed Forces Act to advance the Department of Defense’s AI capabilities. He also helped provide the Pentagon with enhanced hiring authorities to recruit more AI professionals and other personnel with computational skills relevant to military applications.
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