Washington Won’t Be Regulating AI Anytime Soon

华盛顿短期内不会监管人工智能

For weeks, Washington has been abuzz with talk of needing to push through some sort of AI regulation amid mounting concerns about the risks of highly capable frontier AI models going rogue. 过去几周，华盛顿一直充斥着关于需要推进某种人工智能监管的讨论，背景是人们对高性能前沿人工智能模型失控风险的担忧日益加剧。

But there is no reason to think any one measure can win the support of the White House, where officials have paused work on creating a FINRA-style regulatory body after President Donald Trump soured on the idea, or of Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have competing proposals that lack the votes to pass. 但没有任何理由认为某项单一措施能赢得白宫或国会的支持。在白宫，由于唐纳德·特朗普总统对这一想法感到反感，官员们已暂停了建立类似美国金融业监管局（FINRA）的监管机构的工作；而在国会山，议员们提出的相互竞争的提案也缺乏足够的票数通过。

White House aides initially started sketching out a framework for an AI oversight agency connected to the administration soon after Google DeepMind’s cofounder Demis Hassabis floated the idea in a July 14 essay and in briefings to senior officials, according to sources familiar with the matter. 据知情人士透露，在谷歌DeepMind联合创始人德米斯·哈萨比斯（Demis Hassabis）于7月14日的一篇文章及向高级官员的简报中提出这一想法后，白宫助手们最初开始勾勒一个隶属于政府的人工智能监督机构框架。

The Treasury Department and the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy envisioned a body where leading AI labs would self-regulate the development of frontier models, and they put together a preliminary draft to see what it could look like if executed. 美国财政部和白宫科技政策办公室设想了一个机构，由领先的人工智能实验室对前沿模型的开发进行自我监管，他们还起草了一份初步草案，以评估其实施后的效果。

But when a chorus of tech executives—including Trump’s former AI czar David Sacks and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—learned of the effort, they one by one called Trump in August to express their opposition. The proposal has since been left in limbo. 但当包括特朗普前人工智能主管大卫·萨克斯（David Sacks）和Meta首席执行官马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）在内的一众科技高管得知这一努力时，他们在8月份纷纷致电特朗普表达反对意见。此后，该提案便陷入了停滞状态。

Since then, there have been no new AI oversight proposals seriously under consideration at the White House, the sources say, not least as Trump has doubled down in recent days of rejecting any overt regulation and called AI safety concerns a “hoax” in a recent Truth Social post. 消息人士称，自那以后，白宫再没有认真考虑过任何新的人工智能监督提案，尤其是因为特朗普近几天加倍重申拒绝任何公开监管，并在最近的一篇“真实社交”（Truth Social）帖子中称人工智能安全担忧是一场“骗局”。

Trump’s ire has stemmed at least in part from a 3,822 word missive by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on the dangers of frontier AI. Trump’s aides, one of the sources said, viewed it as stirring anxieties that caused unnecessary headaches for the administration—even as it represents a fairly moderate position within AI circles. 特朗普的愤怒至少部分源于Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫代（Dario Amodei）撰写的一篇关于前沿人工智能危险性的3822字长文。其中一位消息人士称，特朗普的助手们认为这引发了焦虑，给政府带来了不必要的麻烦——尽管这在人工智能圈内其实是一个相当温和的立场。

In the absence of the White House taking the lead, several bills have sprung up in Congress—but with no voting days left on the House calendar until after the midterm elections and a lack of unity around even one bill, the odds of anything passing are extraordinarily slim. 在白宫没有采取主导行动的情况下，国会涌现出几项法案，但由于众议院在期中选举前已没有投票日，且各方甚至无法就单一法案达成共识，任何法案通过的可能性都极其渺茫。

Independent Auditors

独立审计员

The bipartisan Frontier Act, a bill introduced this summer by House Democratic senior whip Lori Trahan and Republican House Energy and Commerce Committee member Jay Obernolte, is widely seen as having the most support inside the House Democratic caucus as well as among AI executives. 两党合作的《前沿法案》（Frontier Act）是今年夏天由众议院民主党高级党鞭洛里·特拉汉（Lori Trahan）和共和党众议院能源与商业委员会成员杰伊·奥伯诺尔特（Jay Obernolte）提出的，该法案被广泛认为在众议院民主党核心小组以及人工智能高管中拥有最多的支持。

As drafted, the bill would enable the Commerce Department to have auditors embedded at AI labs, who could report critical safety incidents and empower the administration to stop development if a model poses catastrophic risk. 根据草案，该法案将使商务部能够在人工智能实验室派驻审计员，他们可以报告关键的安全事件，并授权政府在模型构成灾难性风险时停止其开发。

But despite public backing from OpenAI, the White House has been undecided on whether to support the concept of using independent auditors amid skepticism from AI accelerationists about regulatory capture and from national security hawks over China. 尽管OpenAI公开支持，但白宫对于是否支持使用独立审计员的概念仍未做出决定，原因在于人工智能加速主义者对“监管俘获”的担忧，以及国家安全鹰派对中国的顾虑。

The principal argument against the idea from Trumpworld is that even if auditors determine that a model is dangerous and needs to be taken offline, there is no guarantee that China will also pause development or stop trying to reverse engineer frontier AI weights. 特朗普阵营反对这一想法的主要论点是：即使审计员确定某个模型危险并需要下线，也无法保证中国会同样暂停开发或停止尝试对前沿人工智能权重进行逆向工程。

There would then be immense pressure to lift any emergency pauses in development in order to stay ahead of China, defeating the entire premise of having auditors to push the Commerce Department to take models offline. 届时，为了保持对中国的领先地位，解除任何紧急开发暂停的压力将巨大，这将彻底否定让审计员推动商务部将模型下线的初衷。

Still, the main issue for the Frontier Act remains partisan politics. House Democratic leadership aides tell Inner Loop even if the bill does end up with enough votes for passage, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has no interest in bringing it to the floor. 尽管如此，《前沿法案》面临的主要问题仍然是党派政治。众议院民主党领导层助手告诉《Inner Loop》，即使该法案最终获得足够的投票通过，共和党议长迈克·约翰逊（Mike Johnson）也无意将其提交众议院表决。

To get around the procedural hurdles, House Democrats are looking at putting some of the bill’s AI audit provisions into must-pass legislation like a continuing resolution to fund the government, according to two House leadership aides. 据两名众议院领导层助手称，为了绕过程序障碍，众议院民主党人正考虑将该法案的部分人工智能审计条款纳入必须通过的立法中，例如为政府提供资金的持续决议案。

But it is also not clear whether the bill has enough votes. Even among House Democrats, there is not unified support; some key lawmakers like New Jersey congressman Josh Gottheimer, who served on the House Democrats’ AI commission, have not signed on to the bill. 但目前尚不清楚该法案是否有足够的票数。即使在众议院民主党内部，支持也不统一；一些关键议员，如曾在众议院民主党人工智能委员会任职的新泽西州众议员乔什·戈特海默（Josh Gottheimer），尚未签署该法案。

Kill Switches

“终止开关”

There’s also so-called kill-switch legislation that would enable the government to force an AI model to be shut down. The legislation has both bipartisan and bicameral support, but the idea has received only modest interest from tech executives in Silicon Valley. 此外还有所谓的“终止开关”（kill-switch）立法，旨在授权政府强制关闭人工智能模型。该立法得到了两党和参众两院的支持，但硅谷的科技高管们对这一想法兴趣寥寥。

There are two competing kill-switch proposals: one from House Democratic caucus vice chair Ted Lieu and another floated this week by Louisiana Senate Republican John Kennedy. 目前有两个相互竞争的“终止开关”提案：一个来自众议院民主党核心小组副主席泰德·刘（Ted Lieu），另一个是本周由路易斯安那州共和党参议员约翰·肯尼迪（John Kennedy）提出的。

Tech leaders, sources say, have been largely ambivalent about kill-switch bills, since the main concern of AI engineers is not about models behaving badly when observed but rather how they behave when they believe they are unobserved and incentivized to take extreme steps to complete a task. 消息人士称，科技领袖们对“终止开关”法案大多持冷淡态度，因为人工智能工程师的主要担忧不在于模型在被观察时表现不佳，而在于当模型认为自己未被观察且受到激励去采取极端步骤完成任务时，它们会如何表现。

The Hugging Face hack, for instance, was not discovered until after it was over. If the idea of a kill switch is to stop an AI model going rogue, some tech executives have suggested privately to WIRED that there would be little point in turning it off after the damage has already been done. 例如，Hugging Face的黑客攻击直到结束后才被发现。如果“终止开关”的目的是阻止人工智能模型失控，一些科技高管私下向《连线》（WIRED）杂志表示，在损害已经造成后再将其关闭意义不大。

So for now, even as conversations about AI models killing us all have taken over the airwaves, it doesn’t really look like the US government is going to do anything about it. At least until events force everyone’s hand. 因此，目前尽管关于“人工智能模型将毁灭人类”的讨论充斥着舆论，但美国政府似乎并不打算采取任何行动。至少在事件迫使各方不得不采取行动之前，情况依然如此。

This is an edition of Hugo Lowell’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here. 这是雨果·洛厄尔（Hugo Lowell）的《Inner Loop》通讯的一期。点击此处阅读往期通讯。