Sam Altman Calls on Senate to License Most Powerful AI

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, told the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to create a federal agency dedicated to artificial intelligence and establish licenses for the most powerful systems. The request matters because it comes from the company behind ChatGPT and GPT-4, two products that have brought generative AI to the center of public debate in just a few months.

Altman appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, chaired by Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Gary Marcus, a researcher and critic of the current race to build ever-larger models, and Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer, also testified.

A license for models that cross a threshold

OpenAI’s proposal does not call for licensing every program that uses artificial intelligence. Altman has backed a system aimed at frontier models: those with capabilities advanced enough to pose significant risks.

The proposed agency would define that threshold, require safety testing before deployment, and have the power to grant or revoke licenses. It could also mandate independent audits and set rules for how models are evaluated before being made available to companies or the public.

The problem is no small matter. Language models are systems trained on enormous amounts of text to predict the next word and generate responses. That technique allows them to write, summarize, program, and hold convincing conversations, but it can also produce false information with apparent confidence, help automate fraud, or facilitate the creation of disinformation campaigns.

Altman expressed concern that the industry could cause significant harm to the world. It is an unusual statement in a sector accustomed to presenting every advance as inevitable progress, although it comes as OpenAI has become one of the companies benefiting most from the technology’s expansion.

Regulation as a matter of safety and competition

The U.S. debate starts with a practical challenge: regulating AI without treating a spam filter, a medical diagnostic system, and a model capable of generating text, code, and images at scale as if they were the same thing.

A license limited to the most capable systems would, in theory, spare small companies, researchers, and developers using existing models from excessive paperwork. But drawing that line will be difficult. A model may not appear dangerous in an isolated test and yet acquire new capabilities when connected to external tools, databases, or software that allows it to take action.

There is also the question of who can comply with the rules. Large companies have legal teams, computing infrastructure, and the resources to put their systems through costly evaluations. Poorly designed regulation could strengthen the companies that already dominate the market, leaving less room for competitors and open projects.

During the hearing, Gary Marcus argued that companies should not decide for themselves when their products are safe. His position reflects a growing concern: internal testing and voluntary commitments can be useful, but they cannot replace public oversight when the consequences of a failure fall on third parties.

A Congress catching up after ChatGPT

The hearing took place six months after ChatGPT’s public launch and two months after GPT-4. The speed with which these tools have reached schools, offices, and digital services has exposed the fact that the United States lacks a specific federal law for AI.

The Biden administration has already published a framework of principles, the AI Bill of Rights, but it has no force of law. Various federal agencies can intervene in specific areas, such as consumer protection, competition, employment, or data protection, although none oversees general-purpose models comprehensively.

The Senate did not emerge today with a bill ready for passage. It has begun treating AI as infrastructure with potentially broad economic and social effects, rather than simply another technology product. The next step will be deciding whether to create a new authority, strengthen existing regulators, or combine both approaches—and, above all, whether it can move fast enough to keep pace with the technology it wants to oversee.