New Democrat Bill Calls For A Federal Agency To Create “Behavioral Codes,” Introduce “Disinformation Experts”

On May 18, two US senators introduced the Digital Platform Commission Act of 2023, a bill that seeks to give powers to a new federal agency that will set up a council to regulate AI, in the context of social platforms. More precisely, the new body – the Federal Digital Platform Commission – would “rule” on what’s termed as enforceable “behavioral codes,” and among those staffing it will be “disinformation experts.” The move by the two Democratic senators – Michael Bennet and Peter Welch – seems to have come in concert with congressional testimony delivered by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, since the bill was presented shortly afterwards, and backs Altman’s idea to form a new federal agency of the kind. Altman had more thoughts on how all this should work – the new agency, according to him, might be given the power to restrict AI development via licenses or credentialing. The speed with which the two senators picked up on this to announce their bill may owe to the fact Bennet “only” had to go back and update one he already introduced in 2022. This time around, the proposed legislation has been changed in a number of ways, most notably by redefining what a digital platform is. The bill wants this definition to also cover those companies that provide content “primarily” generated by algorithmic processes. This is done by proposing that the future Commission be given the authority over how personal information is used in decision-making or content generation, which…New Democrat Bill Calls For A Federal Agency To Create “Behavioral Codes,” Introduce “Disinformation Experts”