Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and heads of other IT giants met in Washington: What did they discuss?

A meeting was held in the US Senate with the participation of heads of technological giants, during which issues related to the risks, regulations and future of artificial intelligence (AI) were discussed, reports CNN.

This is the first of nine meetings in this format organized by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Civil society leaders and more than 60 senators also participated in the meeting. The series of meetings aims to build consensus on a range of issues as the Senate prepares to draft legislation to regulate the fast-growing AI industry.After the three-hour long meeting, Elon Musk, the owner of X, told reporters: “There’s some chance – above zero – that AI will kill us all. I think it’s low but there’s some chance,” Musk told reporters. “The consequences of getting AI wrong are severe.”

But he also said the meeting “may go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization.”

After the meeting, Chuck Schumer told reporters that everyone present agreed that the federal government should oversee the field of artificial intelligence, but it was not yet clear what the government's role should be.

Schumer noted that Microsoft founder Bill Gates had talked about how AI could be used to feed the world's hungry, and one attendee, whom he did not name, called for tens of billions to be spent on "transformational innovation," thanks to which the advantages of AI can be revealed.

Chuck Schumer said that they want to maximize the benefits of AI and minimize its potential harm. "And that will be our hard work," he said.

Senators coming out of the meeting said they heard a wide range of AI perspectives, union representatives raised the issue of people losing their jobs, and civil rights activists emphasized the need to have an inclusive legislative process that would make the voices of all layers of society heard.

Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, said that many agreed that the AI cannot be left to fend for itself. "I think Microsoft's Satya Nadella said it best. "When it comes to AI, we shouldn’t be thinking about autopilot. You need to have copilots.''

Cantwell noted that there was a noticeable lack of engagement at the meeting on some of the more hard issues, such as whether a new federal agency is needed to regulate AI. "There was no discussion of that," he said, adding that although some at the meeting raised the question of assigning greater oversight responsibilities to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the Commerce Department.

Musk, in turn, said that he thinks it is likely that at some point the AI will be regulated by an independent agency.