After OpenAI hearing, A.I. experts urge Congress to listen to more diverse voices on regulation
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies before a Senate Judiciary Privacy, Technology, and the Law Subcommittee hearing titled ‘Oversight of A.I.: Rules for Artificial Intelligence’ on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 16, 2023. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
At most tech CEO hearings in recent years, lawmakers have taken a contentious tone, grilling executives over their data-privacy practices, competitive methods and more.
But at Tuesday’s hearing on AI oversight including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, lawmakers seemed notably more welcoming toward the ChatGPT maker. One senator even went as far as asking whether Altman would be qualified to administer rules regulating the industry.
Altman’s warm welcome on Capitol Hill, which included a dinner discussion the night prior with dozens of House lawmakers and a separate speaking event Tuesday afternoon attended by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has raised concerns from some AI experts who were not in attendance this week.
These experts caution that lawmakers’ decision to learn about the technology from a leading industry executive could unduly sway the solutions they seek to regulate AI. In conversations with CNBC in the days after Altman’s testimony, AI leaders urged Congress to engage with a diverse set of voices in the field to ensure a wide range of concerns are addressed, rather than focus on those that serve corporate interests.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
A friendly tone
For some experts, the tone of the hearing and Altman’s other engagements on the Hill raised alarm.
Lawmakers’ praise for Altman at times sounded almost like “celebrity worship,” according to Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation and co-founder of the AI Now Institute at New York University.
“You don’t ask the hard questions to people you’re engaged in a fandom about,” she said.
“It doesn’t sound like the kind of hearing that’s oriented around accountability,” said Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute. “Saying, ‘Oh, you should be in charge of a new regulatory agency’ is not an accountability posture.”
West said the “laudatory” tone of some representatives following the dinner with Altman was surprising. She acknowledged it may “signal that they’re just trying to sort of wrap their heads around what this new market even is.”
But she added, “It’s not new. It’s been around for a long time.”
Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor at UCLA and author of “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” said lawmakers who attended the dinner with Altman seemed “deeply influenced to appreciate his product and what his company is doing. And that also doesn’t seem like a fair deliberation over the facts of what these technologies are.”
“Honestly, it’s disheartening to see Congress let these CEOs pave the way for carte blanche, whatever they want, the terms that are most favorable to them,” Noble said.
Real differences from the social media era?
At Tuesday’s Senate hearing, lawmakers made comparisons to the social media era, noting their surprise that industry executives showed up asking for regulation. But experts who spoke with CNBC said industry calls for regulation are nothing new and often serve an industry’s own interests.
“It’s really important to pay attention to specifics here and not let the supposed novelty of someone in tech saying the word ‘regulation’ without scoffing distract us from the very real stakes and what’s actually being proposed, the substance of those regulations,” said Whittaker.
“Facebook has been using that strategy for years,” Meredith Broussard, New York University professor and author of “More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech,” said of the call for regulation. “Really, what they do is they say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re definitely ready to be regulated.’… And then they lobby [for] exactly the opposite. They take advantage of the confusion.”
Experts cautioned that the kinds of regulation Altman suggested, like an agency to oversee AI, could actually stall regulation and entrench incumbents.
“That seems like a great way to completely slow down any progress on regulation,” said Margaret Mitchell, researcher and chief ethics scientist at AI company Hugging Face. “Government is already not resourced enough to well support the agencies and entities they already have.”
Ravit Dotan, who leads an AI ethics lab at the University of Pittsburgh as well as AI ethics at generative AI startup Bria.ai, said that while it makes sense for lawmakers to take Big Tech companies’ opinions into account since they are key stakeholders, they shouldn’t dominate the conversation.
“One of the concerns that is coming from smaller companies generally is whether regulation would be something that is so cumbersome that only the big companies are really able to deal with [it], and then smaller companies end up having a lot of burdens,” Dotan said.
Several researchers said the government should focus on enforcing the laws already on the books and applauded a recent joint agency statement that asserted the U.S. already has the power to enforce against discriminatory outcomes from the use of AI.
Dotan said there were bright spots in the hearing when she felt lawmakers were “informed” in their questions. But in other cases, she said she wished lawmakers had pressed Altman for deeper explanations or commitments.
For example, when asked about the likelihood that AI will displace jobs, Altman said that eventually it will create more quality jobs. While Dotan said she agreed with that assessment, she wished lawmakers had asked Altman for more potential solutions to help displaced workers find a living or gain skills training in the meantime, before new job opportunities become more widely available.
“There are so many things that a company with the power of OpenAI backed by Microsoft has when it comes to displacement,” Dotan said. “So to me, to leave it as, ‘Your market is going to sort itself out eventually,’ was very disappointing.”
Diversity of voices
A key message AI experts have for lawmakers and government officials is to include a wider array of voices, both in personal background and field of experience, when considering regulating the technology.
“I think that community organizations and researchers should be at the table; people who have been studying the harmful effects of a variety of different kinds of technologies should be at the table,” said Noble. “We should have policies and resources available for people who’ve been damaged and harmed by these technologies … There are a lot of great ideas for repair that come from people who’ve been harmed. And we really have yet to see meaningful engagement in those ways.”
Mitchell said she hopes Congress engages more specifically with people involved in auditing AI tools and experts in surveillance capitalism and human-computer interactions, among others. West suggested that people with expertise in fields that will be affected by AI should also be included, like labor and climate experts.
Whittaker pointed out that there may already be “more hopeful seeds of meaningful regulation outside of the federal government,” pointing to the Writers Guild of America strike as an example, in which demands include job protections from AI.
Government should also pay greater attention and offer more resources to researchers in fields like social sciences, who have played a large role in uncovering the ways technology can result in discrimination and bias, according to Noble.
“Many of the challenges around the impact of AI in society has come from humanists and social scientists,” she said. “And yet we see that the funding that is predicated upon our findings, quite frankly, is now being distributed back to computer science departments that work alongside industry.”
Noble said she was “stunned” to see that the White House’s announcement of funding for seven new AI research centers seemed to have an emphasis on computer science.
“Most of the women that I know who have been the leading voices around the harms of AI for the last 20 years are not invited to the White House, are not funded by [the National Science Foundation and] are not included in any kind of transformative support,” Noble said. “And yet our work does have and has had tremendous impact on shifting the conversations about the impact of these technologies on society.”
Noble pointed to the White House meeting earlier this month that included Altman and other tech CEOs, such as Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Noble said the photo of that meeting “really told the story of who has put themselves in charge. …The same people who’ve been the makers of the problems are now somehow in charge of the solutions.”
Bringing in independent researchers to engage with government would give those experts opportunities to make “important counterpoints” to corporate testimony, Noble said.
Still, other experts noted that they and their peers have engaged with government about AI, albeit without the same media attention Altman’s hearing received and perhaps without a large event like the dinner Altman attended with a wide turnout of lawmakers.
Mitchell worries lawmakers are now “primed” from their discussions with industry leaders.
“They made the decision to start these discussions, to ground these discussions in corporate interests,” Mitchell said. “They could have gone in a totally opposite direction and asked them last.”
Mitchell said she appreciated Altman’s comments on Section 230, the law that helps shield online platforms from being held responsible for their users’ speech. Altman conceded that outputs of generative AI tools would not necessarily be covered by the legal liability shield and a different framework is needed to assess liability for AI products.
“I think, ultimately, the U.S. government will go in a direction that favors large tech corporations,” Mitchell said. “My hope is that other people, or people like me, can at least minimize the damage, or show some of the devil in the details to lead away from some of the more problematic ideas.”
“There’s a whole chorus of people who have been warning about the problems, including bias along the lines of race and gender and disability, inside AI systems,” said Broussard. “And if the critical voices get elevated as much as the commercial voices, then I think we’re going to have a more robust dialogue.”
WATCH: Can China’s ChatGPT clones give it an edge over the U.S. in an A.I. arms race?
Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage on Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to CNBC.
The agency said “all users” of the company’s Federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were impacted. Six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites experienced disruptions, the agency said.
“Affected VA medical facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the outage to ensure continuity of care for Veterans,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care.
Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to it’s $28 billion acquisition of the medical records giant Cerner in 2022.
The company’s Federal EHR initially started experiencing issues at around 8:37 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software froze and they were unable to access applications. Access was restored and cleared by 2:05 p.m. Eastern that day after Oracle restarted the system.
Oracle is carrying out an investigation to determine what caused the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The outage marks Oracle’s latest stumble in a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the VA, which has been marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.
Four VA facilities in Michigan are slated to deploy Oracle’s Federal EHR in 2026.
In October, Oracle unveiled a brand-new EHR equipped with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adopter program for the software begins this year, though it’s not clear if the VA has plans to utilize it.
Oracle is slated to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings on Monday.
Watch: Oracle CEO Safra Catz: Being number one is very important
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
Broadcom reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that topped analysts’ expectations, and the chipmaker offered strong guidance for the current quarter. The stock jumped 16% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: $1.60 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
- Revenue: $14.92 billion vs. $14.61 billion expected
Broadcom said it expects about $14.9 billion in second-quarter revenue, higher than the $14.76 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts. Revenue in the last quarter rose 25% from $11.96 billion a year earlier.
The company said net income increased to $5.5 billion, or $1.14 per share, from $1.33 billion, or 28 cents per share, in the same period last year.
Broadcom’s artificial intelligence business is at the center of the company’s recent boom, which saw its stock price more than double last year. The company is one of the primary data center infrastructure vendors for AI, working both on Google’s custom AI chips as well as providing essential components for networking thousands of other chips together to develop advanced AI software.
Prior to the after-hours pop, the stock was down about 23% so far in 2025, as investors rotate out of risk partly due to concern about President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Broadcom said it recorded $4.1 billion in AI revenue during the first quarter, which is 77% higher on a year-over-year basis. Those sales are reported as part of Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions business, which grew 11% on an annual basis to $8.21 billion during the quarter.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said in a statement that the company expects “continued strength in AI semiconductor revenue,” reaching a projected $4.4 billion in the second quarter.
In December, Broadcom said it was developing custom AI chips with three large cloud customers. Tan said on Thursday that in addition to those customers, it had “deeply engaged” with two other hyperscalers, and are working with four other potential customers to develop their own custom AI chips.
Tan said that Broadcom closely chooses partners for developing custom AI chips who can deploy the resulting product in large quantities. “To put it bluntly, we don’t do it for startups,” Tan said.
The other major part of Broadcom’s revenue comes from its infrastructure software division, which includes software from the company’s acquisition of VMware in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. Broadcom said it saw $6.7 billion in software sales during the quarter, a 47% increase on an annual basis.
WATCH: Chip stocks see strong performance punished by markets
Antonio Neri, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, October 20, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares slid 19% in extended trading on Thursday as the data center equipment maker issued quarterly and full-year guidance that came in below consensus.
Here’s how the company did in the fiscal first quarter in comparison with LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: 49 cents adjusted vs. 49 cents expected
- Revenue: $7.85 billion vs. $7.82 billion expected
HPE’s revenue rose 16% year over year in the quarter ending on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company was left with profit of $598 million, or 44 cents per share, up from $387 million, or 29 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The adjusted earnings per share excludes stock-based compensation.
“We could have executed better,” CEO Antonio Neri said on a conference call with analysts. The company had higher than normal inventory for artificial intelligence servers because of a shift to next-generation Blackwell graphics processing units from Nvidia.
The backlog for AI systems rose 29% quarter over quarter to $3.1 billion. Total server revenue totaled $4.29 billion.
HPE dealt with extensive discounting in the market while selling traditional servers during the quarter, finance chief Marie Myers said. As the quarter progressed, HPE moved to limit travel and discretionary spending, she said.
“We expect pricing adjustments may negatively impact top-line growth in the near term,” Myers said.
The company said it would implement a cost-cutting program involving layoffs over the next 18 months that will lead to $350 million in gross savings by the 2027 fiscal year. Around 2,500 employees will be affected, a spokesperson said, representing about 5% of the workforce when also factoring in expected attrition. At the end of October, HPE employed 61,000 people, according to its most recent annual report.
In January, the U.S. Justice Department filed in a federal district court to stop HPE from acquiring Juniper Networks. HPE announced the proposed $14 billion deal in January 2024. The court expects a trial to begin in July, according to the statement. The deal should close by October 2025, HPE said. In December, the company had said the transaction would be done in early 2025.
HPE called for 28 cents to 34 cents in adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal second quarter, with revenue coming in between $7.2 billion and $7.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had looked for 50 cents per share on $7.93 billion in revenue.
For the 2025 fiscal year, HPE sees $1.70 to $1.90 in adjusted earnings per share. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted $2.13 per share.
HPE expects to update its prices to reflect higher expenses from U.S. tariffs, Neri said, adding that he has not perceived any business deterioration from President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
As of Thursday’s close, HPE shares were up about 2% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index was down 2%.
WATCH: HPE shares fall more than 10% after mixed earnings, layoff plans
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