Schumer convenes tech chief executives behind closed doors

Chuck Schumer convened the first of a planned series of AI Insight Forums, a closed-door briefing that brought roughly two-thirds of the Senate together with technology executives and a smaller number of academics and civil society representatives. The confirmed guest list included Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Bill Gates and Anthropic’s Jack Clark, alongside labour and civil-rights representatives.

The format departed from a normal congressional hearing. There was no live broadcast, no transcript released to the public, and — unlike a hearing — no opportunity for individual senators to put questions to witnesses; Schumer and co-organiser Senator Mike Rounds ran the session as a moderated discussion. Schumer told reporters afterwards that he had asked everyone in the room whether government needed to play a role in regulating AI, and that every hand went up despite widely differing views on what that role should be.

The closed format drew criticism from transparency advocates and some participants. Researcher Inioluwa Deborah Raji, one of the few civil-society voices in the room, said afterward that the session functioned “more of an informational rallying effort than it was a genuine opportunity for meaningful policy discourse,” and that a large share of her own contributions were spent correcting industry claims about how well existing systems performed for marginalised groups. Sharpest disagreement centred on proposals such as third-party auditing, which company representatives were reluctant to endorse.

The forum set no policy and produced no bill. It was the first of nine such sessions run through late 2023 and into 2024, from which Schumer’s bipartisan working group eventually produced a roadmap for AI legislation the following May — itself non-binding, leaving the closed-door forums’ practical effect on the pace of actual regulation an open question at the time.