Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet met over zoom with forty Creek students on Oct 30. to address the Assuring Safe, Secure, Ethical, and Stable Systems for AI bill (ASSESS AI) which he introduced in April.

The S.1356 bill, if passed, would establish a cabinet level AI taskforce that ensures that the federal government’s application of the technology aligns with, as Bennett put it in a meeting with roughly 30 Creek students, “democratic values.”

“I hope we’re trying to, in general, find ways of strengthening our democracy,” Bennet said during the meeting. “When I think about the implementation of artificial intelligence I am very hopeful that we are going to be able to implement it as a society.”

This meeting was sponsored by Cybernetics, a club created by students to discuss AI’s impacts on society, culture, and technology.  

“We focus on the governance and ethics of AI. We look at the implications of things like social media algorithms or predictive policing algorithms,” junior club founder and president Benjapon Frankel said. 

This particular event focused on how the federal government should work to regulate the AI it uses while keeping the American people in mind. 

“I think the American people deserve to be put into negotiation with these massive tech companies. The American people have never had a negotiation about our data, about our privacy,” Bennett said. 

The taskforce is meant to be a part of the President’s cabinet departments, so that Congress, which Bennet says has been unable to legislate recently, will not have to argue over regulations.

“The best way of doing that, I think, would be to set up a new agency that would be staffed by experts who could do these kinds of negotiations on behalf of the American people, informed by public sentiment,” Bennett said. “One of my hopes is that by legislating things, rather than just putting them in executive order, they’ll have more staying power.”

Frankel and Bennet both believe citizens should be heavily invested in AI’s regulation. 

“I think that [AI Regulation is] important for almost any citizen considering that AI and other advanced technologies are going to influence our lives. So I think it’s important to understand how it’s changing our lives and what we can do to make sure it helps,” Frankel said. 

Bennet’s perspective comes from the tension-filled experiences the government has with social media companies, like Senate’s TikTok hearings and recent criticism of Facebook. For him, this bill is something he believes all Americans should care about. 

“I think there is a real desire out there to have some sort of rules of the road,” Bennet said. “And to me, this is the most common sense way of getting those rules of the road and that’s why I think we have a chance.”