Musk meets with Schumer, discusses AI, the economy, and 'the future'

Schumer has been circulating a 'high-level framework that outlines a new regulatory regime for artificial intelligence' in recent months

Elon Musk met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday to discuss artificial intelligence and other issues on Capitol Hill. 

"It was good. We talked about the future," Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter, told reporters as he left the meeting. "We talked about AI and the economy."

AI has been at the top of many lawmakers' minds following last year's launch of ChatGPT, a language model chatbot created by OpenAI that has attracted billions in investments and could transform the economy. 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk speaks

Twitter CEO Elon Musk speaks at a marketing conference in Miami Beach, Florida, on April 18, 2023. (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Schumer has been working for months to develop a "high-level framework that outlines a new regulatory regime for artificial intelligence."

"The Age of AI is here, and here to stay," Schumer said earlier this month. "Given the AI industry’s consequential and fast moving impact on society, national security, and the global economy, I’ve worked with some of the leading AI practitioners and thought leaders to create a framework that outlines a new regulatory regime that would prevent potentially catastrophic damage to our country while simultaneously making sure the U.S. advances and leads in this transformative technology."

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Schumer told reporters after the nearly hour-long meeting that they also discussed Musk's electric vehicle company Tesla

"Look, we had a very good meeting. We talked about Buffalo. Tesla has a large plant in Buffalo, and we talked about AI," Schumer told reporters. 

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Gigafactory 2, a 1.2 million square foot facility in Buffalo, started producing solar cells and modules in 2017, followed by electrical components for electric vehicle chargers in 2019. 

chuck schumer speaks

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a news conference to discuss student debt cancelation on Capitol Hill. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images / Getty Images)

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Musk, who has warned that artificial intelligence could lead to "civilizational destruction," recently launched a new AI company called X.AI.

"I'm going to start something which I call TruthGPT, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe," Musk told Fox News earlier this month. "And I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe."