OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke to an engaged crowd of about 60 lawmakers at a dinner Monday about the advanced artificial technology his company produces and the challenges of regulating it.
The wide-ranging discussion that lasted about two hours came ahead of Altman’s first time testifying before Congress at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy and technology hearing on Tuesday. IBM Chief Privacy and Trust Officer Christina Montgomery and New York University Professor Emeritus Gary Marcus will also testify at the hearing, which is focused on AI oversight.
The dinner discussion comes at a peak moment for AI, which has thoroughly captured Congress’ fascination. On Tuesday, at the same time as the meeting where Altman will testify, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is hosting a separate hearing on artificial intelligence in government. And on Wednesday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet will hold yet another hearing focused on AI and copyright law.
About half a dozen members who spoke with CNBC outside of the dinner on Capitol Hill described a wide-ranging and informative discussion with Altman that spanned the many fears and hopes for opportunities that come with AI.
Altman received high praise from several members.
“I thought it was fantastic,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus who co-hosted the dinner with GOP Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson, R-La. “It’s not easy to keep members of Congress rapt for close to two hours. So Sam Altman was very informative and provided a lot of information.”
“He gave fascinating demonstrations in real time,” Johnson said. “I think it amazed a lot of members. And it was a standing-room-only crowd in there.”
One of the demonstrations, Johnson said, was having ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, write a bill dedicating a post office to Lieu. After, he had it write a speech for Johnson to deliver in introducing the bill on the House floor.
“It was a beautiful speech,” Lieu quipped.
“It kind of also freaked us out,” Johnson said.
Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., said that despite being in her third term in Congress, she’s “never been to a meeting like this,” and praised Lieu and Johnson for bringing together “a total cross-section of our entire Congress to engage in a topic that is transforming our world.”
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who co-chairs the Congressional AI Caucus, called Altman very “forthcoming” and “wonderful to have a thoughtful conversation.”
“There isn’t any question where he pulls back on anything,” she said, adding that lawmakers had very thoughtful things to ask.
Eshoo said she had invited Altman to speak to the caucus, but that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., insisted it be open to the entire chamber. Eshoo said she welcomed the opportunity.
“You have to understand something before you can accept or reject it,” Eshoo said. “But then, it’s like getting socks on an octopus, because it covers everything.”
One of those tentacles has to do with copyright law, something House Judiciary Subcommittee on IP Chair Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has been thinking a lot about.
Issa said he’s “very interested in fairly quickly providing additional guidelines for the copyright office,” adding that even if entirely AI-generated content can’t be covered by copyright, there needs to be guidance about when material that was created with the assistance of AI can be copyrighted.
As for Altman, Issa said that in general, “He made it clear that this can’t go forward without some legislative and regulatory action, and at the same time, it would be adverse to shut down the momentum. So it’s, how do you develop guardrails without sideswiping it or taking it off the road?”
Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., who has a graduate degree in artificial intelligence and sits on the congressional AI caucus, said he discussed with Altman the potential to regulate the precursors to the technology, much like is done with the raw materials needed to make nuclear weapons. Obernolte suggested this might take the form of an international registry that keeps track of which entities have enough computing power to create advanced AI.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., whose district spans part of Silicon Valley, said Altman made two important points to members in the room.
“One is that AI is a tool, not a creature,” he said. “This is something that is going to assist human beings not replace human beings. Second, that it will do tasks, not jobs. This is something that’s going to help people with the jobs they have, not displace those jobs. And so I think it’s been a sober conversation that’s helping members understand what the tool actually does and help refute some of the hype.”
Still. there are unanswered questions about the vast capabilities of AI, where Congress should step in, and OpenAI’s approach to harnessing the technology. For example, some experts have critiqued the company for choosing to be less forthcoming about what went into making its latest large language model, GPT-4, something its executives have defended as an important competitive and safety move.
Khanna said the question of openness of the model is something he’s discussed with Altman before, though not at Monday’s dinner.
“The challenge and the value we have to contemplate is the value of having this be open source so other non-incumbents can participate,” Khanna said. “But the danger of open source is they could get into the wrong hands. And there’s a trade off between that.”
Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.
In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.
Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.
In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.
Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.
The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”
On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.
“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”
Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.
Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.
The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.
An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images
Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.
The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.
“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”
At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.
The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.
Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.
Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.
Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.
Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.
The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.
While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.
On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.
Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.
Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.
CNBC
Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.
Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.
The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.
Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.
In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”