Chuck Schumer discusses need for measured approach to AI regulation

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer discussed the need for a measured approach to AI regulation following a Senate meeting with tech executives yesterday. The AI insight forum was attended by senators and CSO leaders as well as CEOs from blue-chip tech companies including Google, Meta, Nvidia and OpenAI. Following the session, which is the first of 9, Schumer stated that all attendees agreed that some form of AI regulation was needed with views differing on the form this regulation should take. Despite stating that some regulatory steps, such as watermarking requirements, could be implemented on a shorter timeline Schumer cautioned "If you go too fast, you can ruin things".

In commercial tech news, Arm priced shares at $51 corresponding to a valuation of $55bn in the company's IPO with trading scheduled to begin today in New York. Although this is lower than the $64bn valuation in SoftBank’s re-purchase of shares in August, it represents an increase of more than 25% from the $40bn valuation in Nvidia’s abandoned acquisition of Arm last year. Yesterday’s IPO, in which Arm raised almost $5bn, is the largest since EV manufacturer Rivian raised $12bn in 2021.

Read more below for a round-up of the key tech policy stories shaping the sector today.

On the second trial day in the US DoJ’s antitrust case against Google yesterday, a former Google executive described an increased focus on default search engine deals in his time at the company. The case centres on allegations that billion-dollar payments to mobile carriers who allocated Google default search engine status violated competition law by preventing competitors from accessing key markets. When questioned by the DoJ at the trial, Chris Barton, who worked at Google in strategic partnership and business development roles from 2004 to 2011, stated that the number of executives working on securing default search engine deals significantly increased during his time at the company. DoJ lawyers also questioned CalTech neuroscientist Antonio Rangel at the trial on Wednesday who stated "The consensus is that defaults have a powerful impact on consumer decisions".

Singapore’s central bank (MAS) has banned the founders of bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund 3 Arrows Capital (3AC) from trading in the jurisdiction. 3AC was based in Singapore before being ordered to liquidate by a British Virgin Islands (BVI) court in July 2022 after failing to repay loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Later in June 2022, the MAS reprimanded 3AC for filing false information exceeding thresholds for assets under management. BVI court filings at the time of the bankruptcy showed that 3AC owed creditors more than $3.5bn. Discussing the market activity ban Loo Siew Yee, the assistant managing director at MAS, stated that the bank “takes a serious view of Mr Zhu’s and Mr Davies’ flagrant disregard of MAS’ regulatory requirements and dereliction of their directors’ duties.”

Reporting by Nick Scott. For a further read:

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Cover photo by Martin Falbisoner licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.