Tesla Inc and Twitter Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk discussed artificial intelligence (AI) issues and electric vehicles with US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday.
“We talked about the future,” Musk told reporters after leaving the meeting that lasted about an hour. “We talked about AI and the economy.”
Schumer told reporters he had a very good meeting with Musk.
Photo: EPA
“We talked about Buffalo [New York]. Tesla has a large plant in Buffalo. And we talked about AI,” CNN and Politico reported Schumer as saying.
Earlier this month, Schumer, a Democrat, said he had launched an effort to establish rules on AI to address national security and education concerns, as use of programs such as ChatGPT becomes widespread.
Schumer said he had drafted and circulated a “framework that outlines a new regulatory regime that would prevent potentially catastrophic damage to our country, while simultaneously making sure the US advances and leads in this transformative technology.”
In March, Musk and a group of AI experts and industry executives released an open letter calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4.
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive, and their risks will be manageable,” the letter issued by the Future of Life Institute said.
There is a growing push in Washington for AI regulations.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, a Democrat, sent major AI CEOs a letter on Wednesday asking them to address concerns.
US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday that US President Joe Biden’s administration is working “as aggressively as possible to figure out our approach” to AI.
“The challenge is you don’t want to stifle innovation in a brand new area with massive potential,” Raimondo said.
In January, Musk met two top White House officials in Washington to discuss how Tesla and the Biden administration could work to advance electric vehicle production.
Separately, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Wednesday met with Musk in Washington to call for investment in his country, Yoon’s office said.
The two met at Musk’s request, as Yoon is in the US for a six-day state visit, South Korean Vice Minister of Finance Choi Sang-mok told a news conference in Washington on Wednesday.
Yoon touted South Korea as an ideal country for Tesla to build a gigafactory, citing the country’s cutting-edge industrial robots and high-skilled workers, Choi said.
“[Yoon] also said he would actively support Tesla in terms of location, human resources and tax if it makes the investment decision,” Choi said.
Musk told Yoon that South Korea remains one of the top candidates for Tesla’s gigafactories, and he would have an opportunity to visit the Asian country, Choi said.
South Korea is home to two of the world’s biggest automakers, Hyundai Motor Co and Kia Corp, as well as battery makers such as SK On Co and Samsung SDI Co.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement. The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said. The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far. According to TSMC, the first Arizona
The lethal hack of Hezbollah’s Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices’ path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers might have few assurances about what they are getting. While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that is not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say. The response from the companies at the center of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37
FRIENDLY TAKEOVER: While Qualcomm Inc’s proposal to buy some or all of Intel raises the prospect of other competitors, Broadcom Inc is staying on the sidelines Qualcomm Inc has approached Intel Corp to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever merger and acquisition deals. California-based Qualcomm proposed a friendly takeover for Intel in recent days, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The proposal is for all of the chipmaker, although Qualcomm has not ruled out buying some parts of Intel and selling off others. It is uncertain whether the initial approach would lead to an agreement and any deal is likely to come under close antitrust scrutiny
SECURITY CONCERNS: The proposed ban on Chinese autonomous vehicle software and hardware would go into effect with the 2027 and 2030 model years respectively The US Department of Commerce today is expected to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on US roads due to national security concerns, two sources said. US President Joe Biden’s administration has raised concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the Internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the