The U.S. is currently beating China in the AI race, but it is “very hard to say how far ahead we are,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Thursday.
He was part of a panel of technology leaders appearing before a Senate committee chaired by Senator Ted Cruz, with the hearing focused on “Winning the AI Race: Enhancing U.S. Capacities in Computation and Invention.” Also giving testimony were Lisa Su from AMD, Michael Intrator from CoreWeave, and Brad Smith representing Microsoft.
American politicians have been open about their desire to see the U.S. beat China in the AI race. Cruz asked the panel during the testimony if the U.S. is currently winning. Altman said he believes American models, like OpenAI, are the “best models in the world,” but that it is difficult to judge how far behind China is.
Su responded to the question by saying even though the U.S. has the “best AI accelerators in the world,” China is “certainly catching up.”
Compared to what we’re capable of achieving, I want to emphasize again: We must make sure that our culture of innovation thrives,” Su stated. “This requires highly supportive governmental policies that remain stable over time, enabling us to focus on excelling where we shine most—innovating across all levels of the technology stack.
The AI hearing was also meant to look at how removing regulatory barriers in AI can “secure U.S. dominance in the 21st century global industrial revolution.”
Altman’s testimony focused on the importance of AI in the future of the American workforce.
This future could be incredibly promising, yet it will only happen if we take decisive actions to guarantee that an AI driven by America and grounded in democratic principles such as liberty and openness triumphs over an autocratic alternative,” Altman stated in his pre-prepared comments. “The consequences of this are immense—Congress is correct in asserting that the U.S. needs to spearhead this effort.
During his opening remarks, Altman also took the opportunity to say that usership of OpenAI’s ChatGPT is taking off. He said that ChatGPT is being used by more than 500 million people each week, which is 100 million more than management said were using the platform each week back in
February
.
This comes one day after an Apple executive testified in a Justice Department lawsuit against Google that searches in Apple browsers fell for the first time as people turned to AI for their search needs.
Alphabet stock tumbled
on Wednesday as investors feared AI would take market share from what has been the search king.
Alphabet stock
regained some ground
On Thursday following the company’s statement about observing “an overall increase in search queries.”
Write to Angela Palumbo at
[email protected]
