Artificial Intelligence: Examining Trends in Innovation and Competition
2025-04-02
Loading video...
Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
or being here. The subcommittee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time. We welcome everyone to today's hearing on artificial intelligence and trends in innovation and competition. I will now recognize myself for an opening statement. Artificial intelligence, AI, is a powerful new technology, and it's moving fast. It already is changing the way businesses operate, how people work, and how we solve problems throughout our society. From agriculture to manufacturing to customer service, AI is showing up in more places every day, and it's helping Americans get more done faster and more efficiently. There's no doubt this is a big moment for both America and the rest of the world. But the question before us today is this. Will we respond to it with more freedom, or with more government control. America has always led the way in innovation, not because we have the biggest government, but because we have trusted our people. We believe in free markets, competition, and limited government. That's what built our economy, and that's how we create new technologies from the light bulb to the smartphone. And that's why the United States, not China or Europe, has been the global leader in innovation for over a century. And that same model is working in AI. The story we hear sometimes is that a few big companies are dominating the AI sector. But when you look closer, the story unravels. Throughout this industry, there is real competition happening at every layer of the AI sector, in cloud infrastructure, in AI models, and in tools and applications. It's true that big tech plays a role in this sector. But you also have startups, open source developers, university labs, and solo engineers pushing the boundaries of this exciting new technology.
Small businesses are using AI to do things they never could afford before, automate routine tasks, improve customer service, analyze data, write content, design products, and more. AI is helping the little guy compete with the big guys. It's lowering barriers to entry across the board. This isn't a monopoly story, it's a success story. It's the free market doing what it does best. But unfortunately, some in government want to step in and start regulating before they even understand what they are regulating. They want to create sweeping new rules or even whole new agencies to oversee AI under the claim of safety and of fairness. They want to decide which models are quote unquote responsible which tools are quote-unquote approved, and which approaches are fair, and who gets to build what. That's very dangerous. We see this same saga playing out time and time again. Overregulation can kill innovation. When government inserts itself too early, it locks in incumbents, drives up costs, and freezes the market. Startups get squeezed. The rules benefit the insiders, and innovation slows to a crawl. Meanwhile, our competitors, especially in China, aren't waiting around. They're pouring billions into AI development. They're using it to monopolize their military, monitor their citizens, and try to leapfrog the U.S. on the global stage to the detriment of Democrat principles and values. And over in Europe, the EU is rolling out a top-down AI regulatory regime that already is causing problems for American companies trying to do business overseas. The rules are vague, burdensome, and constantly shifting. And they've been written by bureaucrats who aren't accountable, certainly to the American people. We should not copy China's model of control, and we should not copy Europe's model of overregulation.
We need to stay true to what works, and that is free enterprise, open competition, and light touch regulatory approach that allows innovation to flourish. That doesn't mean we ignore real problems. We should enforce our existing antitrust laws if companies are abusing their market power. We should be on guard against fraud, abuse, and national security threats, but we don't need a heavy-handed new regulatory regime to do that. What we need is to keep the U.S. the best place in the world to build, test, and deploy AI.
Sign up for free to see the full transcript
Accounts help us prevent bots from abusing our site. Accounts are free and will allow you to access the full transcript.