Today, Sen. Ted Cruz unveiled the Supporting Artificial Intelligence Normalization and Diffusion By Oversight and Experimentation (SANDBOX) Act, which allows the federal government to pick and choose which technology companies can enter a “regulatory sandbox” and avoid typical federal regulations on emerging technologies.
This legislation is a victory for Big Tech CEOs, who have consistently failed to protect Americans from social and psychological harms caused by their products. Just this summer, multiple companies have come under bipartisan fire for refusing to take Americans’ safety seriously and institute proper guardrails on their AI systems, leading to avoidable tragedies.
As Big Tech races toward building advanced AI, this is the wrong time to remove government oversight from the equation.
“Ideally, Big Tech companies and frontier labs would make safety a top priority and work to prevent harm to Americans. However, we have seen again and again that they have not done so. The SANDBOX Act removes much-needed oversight as Big Tech refuses to remain transparent with the public about the risks of advanced AI,” said Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI. “This raises many questions about who can enter the so-called ‘regulatory sandbox’ and why. We hope that we will get answers to these questions in the coming days.”
###