The US Senate AI Working Group, a bipartisan group of senators working to steer future AI legislation, has recently released a policy roadmap outlining their proposed approach to future legislation. This roadmap, titled "Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence," presents a strategic gap-filling method for "High Impact Uses of AI" to identify and address specific regulatory needs rather than introducing an entirely new legislative framework. 

The AI Working Group's roadmap suggests that some necessary laws to regulate AI may already exist. In the portion of the roadmap that addresses "High Impact Uses of AI," the roadmap outlines a strategy to identify and address gaps in existing laws rather than introducing sweeping new legislation. The roadmap states, "[w]e encourage the relevant committees to consider identifying any gaps in the application of existing law to AI systems that fall under their committees' jurisdiction and, as needed, develop legislative language to address such gaps." It suggests placing "appropriate, case-by-case requirements on high-risk uses of AI, such as requirements around transparency, explainability, and testing and evaluation," when necessary.

The roadmap recognizes the importance of sector-specific regulations and tailored legislative measures to address unique challenges within different sectors. The roadmap states that the AI Working Group "[e]ncourages committees to review forthcoming guidance from relevant agencies that relates to high impact AI use cases and to explore if and when an explainability requirement may be necessary." One provided example is the financial sector, where the roadmap supports a regulatory gap analysis to ensure AI models use accurate and representative data. It states that the AI Working Group "[s]upports Section 3 of S. 3050, directing a regulatory gap analysis in the financial sector, and encourages the relevant committees to develop legislation that ensures financial service providers are using accurate and representative data in their AI models, and that financial regulators have the tools to enforce applicable law and/or regulation related to these issues."

The US Senate AI Working Group's proposed gap-filling approach to AI regulation demonstrates its commitment to addressing the unique challenges posed by AI. As AI technology continues to evolve, this approach promises dynamic legislative responses to keep pace with the changing AI landscape while leaning on existing laws to do some of the heavy lifting of AI regulation.