WASHINGTON - At a Senate Rules Committee hearing titled “The Use of Artificial Intelligence at the Library of Congress, Government Publishing Office, and Smithsonian Institution,” U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration with oversight over these agencies, highlighted how AI has affected the three agencies. 

“While it is important that our three witnesses today speak to measures they are taking to safeguard against potential harms, it is also important to note that they are using AI technology in their work to protect our country's greatest treasures, advance scientific research, and improve public access to information,” said Klobuchar. 

Klobuchar continued, “We must continue working to stay ahead of the curve, and I am committed to working in a bipartisan way with Senator Fischer so our country can benefit, and your agencies can benefit, from the best of AI while protecting against any threat.” 

Video of Klobuchar’s opening statement is available for download HERE.

Klobuchar has led efforts to address the threat of misleading AI-generated content.

In November 2023, Klobuchar and Senators John Thune (R-SD), Roger Wicker (R-MS), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), introduced the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act to establishes a framework to bolster innovation while bringing greater transparency, accountability, and security to the development and operation of the highest-impact applications of AI.

In November 2023, Klobuchar and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) called on the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission to continue efforts to raise awareness about and prevent artificial intelligence voice cloning scams in order to protect Americans from this growing fraud. 

In October 2023, Klobuchar and Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) sent a letter to the CEOs of Meta Platforms, Inc. and X Corp., Mark Zuckerberg and Linda Yaccarino, respectively, seeking information on how their organizations are addressing AI-generated content in political ads hosted on their social media platforms, and in November, Meta announced that it will bar the use of its generative AI tools in political ads and will require disclaimers on AI-generated political ads.

In September 2023, Klobuchar and Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO), Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law; Chris Coons (D-DE), Chair of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property; and Susan Collins (R-ME), Vice Chair of the Appropriations Committee and former Chair of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, introduced the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, bipartisan legislation to ban the use of AI to generate materially deceptive content falsely depicting federal candidates in political ads to influence federal elections. This legislation has also been cosponsored by Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE). 

In May 2023, Klobuchar and U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) introduced the REAL Political Ads Act. This legislation would require a disclaimer on political ads that use images or video generated by artificial intelligence. Companion legislation is led in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY).

A transcript of Klobuchar’s full opening statement is available below.

Senator Klobuchar: Today, we're going to talk about the very important topic of artificial intelligence and the agencies that play such a critical role in serving the American people. 

AI has the potential, as we know, to lead to incredible innovation by supercharging scientific research, improving access to information, and increasing productivity. 

But like any emerging technology, AI comes with significant risks. And our laws need to be as sophisticated as the potential [threats] ... to our own democracy. Understanding these risks and benefits has been a major bipartisan focus of the Senate. With Senator Schumer, Rounds, Young, and Heinrich leading a new series of nine forums since the fall. And a number of us on various committees working on proposals so that we're going to be ready when this hits, and I think, as you all saw from the reports of the robocalls in New Hampshire with the fake voice of the President or other things that have also occurred to candidates on the Republican side of the aisle. This is not going to be one side or another. It is something that we, as a Congress have to deal with and put up some guardrails. And that includes, of course, the work that goes on in these agencies.

At our hearing in September, all the witnesses agreed that AI poses risks to our elections. And we've heard testimony on why we must work to put guardrails in place. That is why I'm leading a bipartisan bill with Senators Hawley, Coons, and Collins, and also joined Senators Bennet and Ricketts to prohibit fraudulent AI content in our elections within the framework of the Constitution. For instance, allowing for satire and the like and why we need to take other steps, like disclaimers on ads that use AI so that the citizens of this country can actually believe that it is their own candidate or their opposing candidate who's speaking. 

Another example of legislation going on is Senator Thune and I have joined together in introducing a bill to put in place commonsense safeguards for the highest-risk, non-defense applications of AI and improve transparency. I see that Senator Capito is here. She's also joined us on this important bill that's mostly coming out of the Commerce Committee. 

So, let's get to your stuff. AI and how it affects the work of the three agencies before us: the Library of Congress, the Government Publishing Office, and the Smithsonian. 

While it is important that our three witnesses today speak to measures they're taking to safeguard against potential harms, they are also, I think it is important to note, using AI technology in their work to protect our country's greatest treasures, advance scientific research, and improve public access to information. 

For example, the Library of Congress is testing emerging AI technology to expand how researchers can better use the resources they already housed in their collections, which make up the largest library in the world – we note with much humbleness – such as a new AI tool that lets users instantly search through 1.56 million images from digitized historical newspapers to assist in archival research. 

GPO is working to harness the efficiencies offered by AI to modernize how it makes information from all three branches of government more usable for the public, since much of its work has expanded to digital publishing; hence their new name from “printing” to “publishing”. And as part of its work producing government documents GPO is using AI to ensure quality control of items such as the material you use to print passports. It printed 22 million of them, as we learned at the last hearing last year. 

Finally, at the Smithsonian, which is the world's largest museum, education, and research complex, researchers are exploring how to use AI to do things like tackle some of the most challenging problems in astrophysics, classify species of fish in the Amazon, and make collections more accessible, accurately identifying the contribution of women – I like this one – in historical text in which they were often identified in writing by only their husbands' names. That'll be interesting, what you discover with AI. 

We must continue working to stay ahead of the curve. And I'm committed to working in a bipartisan way with Senator Fischer so that our country can benefit and your agencies can benefit from the best of AI while protecting against any threat.

Thank you again, and I'll turn it over to Senator Fischer.

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