Shared (Mis)Understandings and the Governance of AI: A Thematic Analysis of the 2023-2024 Oversight of AI Hearings

TL;DR

This paper analyzes US legislative hearings on AI to explore how industry narratives influence governance debates and shape power dynamics in early AI regulation efforts.

Contribution

It offers a thematic analysis of hearings to reveal how industry-driven understandings of AI impact policy and governance frameworks.

Findings

Industry dominates narratives on AI impacts.

Governance debates are shaped by industry influence.

Alternative approaches are marginalized or dismissed.

Abstract

This paper investigates early legislative deliberations over Artificial Intelligence in the United States through a thematic analysis of the 2023-2024 Oversight of AI hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. I focus on these hearings as a site where participants draw from, and renegotiate, accustomed ways of thinking about technology and society. First, I examine how participants, who overwhelmingly represent the technology industry, work to create narratives for understanding the past, present, and future impacts of AI. Second, I examine how these narratives are invoked to argue for particular forms of AI governance, while casting alternative approaches as everything from infeasible to anti-American. By tracing industry influence over dominant understandings of the impacts of AI and the proper role of government, I examine the arrangements of power enacted and upheld through these hearings. In all, I ask: what role to shared (mis)understandings of AI play in early attempts at governing this technology?