Speaker Johnson meets with OpenAI CEO, says Congress ‘needs to play’ role in artificial intelligence

House Speaker Mike Johnson met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to discuss what kind of role Congress has to play in legislating on artificial intelligence.

“It was a very good meeting,” Johnson told reporters afterward. “We talked about where we are with regard to the approach of Congress to AI.”

He said they had a “very thoughtful discussion” about how the Senate and House can forge a bipartisan path forward.

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“There’s unlimited potential [in] AI, but we also all agree, and Sam agrees, that there are some dangers as well. And so there’s a role that Congress needs to play in figuring all that out, and we’re in the process of doing that,” Johnson said. 

Altman would not go into specifics about what they discussed when asked by Fox News Digital.

“I’m grateful for how much he cares about the issue and excited to see what the legislative process will do,” he said of the meeting.

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“It was a sort of pretty high level meeting, just about trying to balance this sort of tremendous upside and figure out how to mitigate the risk but make sure that the U.S. does really great here,” Altman added.

Johnson did not answer a shouted question from Fox News Digital on Friday morning about whether he had any follow-up plans on AI after the meeting.

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The meeting came a day after the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee announced a bipartisan working group to look at the impact of AI on the finance industry.

“The rapid advance of artificial intelligence technology holds immense promise to transform society and our economy for the better, but it also comes with risks,” Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said. “The Working Group will explore this technology’s potential, specifically its adoption in our financial system. It will also find ways to leverage artificial intelligence to foster a more inclusive financial system, while establishing the U.S. as the world leader in AI development and terms of use.”

Ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said the group would “investigate the ways in which this technology may embed historic inequities in the financial services and housing markets through the use of data that reflect underlying bias or discrimination.”