You are here for the AI impact summit in India, and Bhutan is a guest like so many others. But at the end of the day, it’s clear that the AI industry today is dominated by two countries, only US and China. Is there a space for other countries to have a voice?

1.4 billion Indians under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I dare say, is more than a space. I know that India has the ambition and the mettle to pull it off and lead [the sector] too.

It isn’t just about India but other countries as well. Switzerland will be the next host of the AI Impact Summit, and Bhutan, presumably, in the future, can be the host. But can all the other countries that haven’t developed AI models yet going to be able to play catch up? The rules are already being set by the two big hegemons…

Therefore, all the more reason for India to work harder, faster, and lead the pack, really.

How does Bhutan see AI? Is it a is it seen as a tool?

I hope that AI remains a tool. I hope the big powers, US, China and India will ensure that it is a tool, a good tool, an efficient tool, a tool like no other. But I hope it remains a tool. In the wrong hands, this tool could become something more or be misused. So we need ethics, we need values. We need regulation. We need oversight. We need, as prime minister, Modi announced transparency, when he said he wants a glass box, not a black box.

Are you hopeful of new synergies between India and Bhutan when it comes to AI, especially as creating AI requires a lot of electricity?

Yes and the development cooperation between India and Bhutan has been most successful in just this area. It has been successful in a wide range of areas, of course but most successful in harnessing energy that is clean and green from Bhutan’s hydropower. Even as we speak, we are expanding our cooperation there, and we have ambitious targets to develop something like 25 gigawatts in the next 15 years. We are working with the Government of India. We are working with private firms in India, and that energy is going to be used for development of technology in particular. Much of our development of Artificial Intelligence is going to take place in the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), which his Majesty the King (Fifth King of Bhutan Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck), has established as a special administrative region along the border with India. So, yes, we can do a lot together.

It has been two years since the [Bhutanese] King announced a plan for Gelephu.  How has it progressed? There is an airport now…

Gelephu always had an airport, but it was a domestic airport. That domestic airport is now operating international flights to India, and an international airport is being built. For that airport, the conceptual drawings based on His Majesty’s vision has been already completed by a world famous architect and his company. Gelephu mindfulness city, is going to be a hub for Vajrayana Buddhism, and many monasteries and universities and meditation centres, retreat centres  will be being built, and a lot of the infrastructure is coming up already. The old town is getting a facelift and will be upgraded to provide space that’s required to function. More importantly, the soft component, all the laws are in place. GMC has its own board and authority, own government structure, and so it’s already in operation. Many businesses have expressed interest. Tata Consultancy has an office in GMC, Tata Power is doing a lot of work, Adani power is doing a lot of work in developing energy, but also has a base in Gelephu. And we have many “founding members” for GMC (these include Gautam Adani), and we’re hopeful that we will get even more founding members from India.

During the covid pandemic, Bhutan was seen as crypto power. Do you see a space for more outsourcing, high tech, artificial intelligence, quantum computing in GMC?

Look, at GMC we have stability. We have proximity to India. We have a good friendship with India. We have Prime Minister Modi’s personal support for the Gelephu Mindfulness City . We have access to huge amounts of energy that is clean and green. We have an area that is clean and sustainable and liveable, and therefore we can do a lot together in this, in the technological space.

Even so, the GMC was set up with one big ambition, to bring jobs for Bhutanese, especially the youth. India too has this large population and manpower. How do you deal with the concern that Artificial Intelligence is going to take away jobs and not produce more?

Well, the obvious answer to that is to work even more on artificial intelligence. Jokes aside, there will be jobs, higher end jobs. As long as tools will remain as tools, you need people to handle the tools. Should the day arrive that tools don’t need human masters, we are in trouble, and this is the whole debate that’s going on. If artificial intelligence can replace people en masse, then we’ve reached a very dangerous tipping point.

Is building a global institution for governance a solution?

Every leader at the AI Summit has expressed a need for guardrails. They have all expressed a need for ethics and values and transparency and equity, also in terms of enjoying the benefits of AI. And every leader I’ve heard has expressed concerns about the lack of moderation, regulation, of oversight. So if political leaders are so concerned and they apply action to their concerns, then we should be able to moderate how AI is developed. I believe India is poised to provide that leadership in terms of moderation, because India is the seat of the world’s most ancient wisdom, ancient civilizations. If we ignore ancient wisdom, however, then I think this technology can get out of hand.

The nation’s biggest technology executives on Wednesday loosely endorsed the idea of government regulations for artificial intelligence at an unusual closed-door meeting in the US Senate. But there is little consensus on what regulation would look like, and the political path for legislation is difficult.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who organized the private forum on Capitol Hill as part of a push to legislate artificial intelligence, said he asked everyone in the room — including almost two dozen tech executives, advocates and skeptics — whether government should have a role in the oversight of artificial intelligence, and “every single person raised their hands, even though they had diverse views,” he said.

Among the ideas discussed was whether there should be an independent agency to oversee certain aspects of the rapidly-developing technology, how companies could be more transparent and how the United States can stay ahead of China and other countries.

“The key point was really that it’s important for us to have a referee,” said Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X, during a break in the daylong forum. “It was a very civilized discussion, actually, among some of the smartest people in the world.”

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Schumer will not necessarily take the tech executives’ advice as he works with colleagues on the politically difficult task of ensuring some oversight of the burgeoning sector. But he invited them to the meeting in hopes that they would give senators some realistic direction for meaningful regulation.

Congress should do what it can to maximize AI’s benefits and minimize the negatives, Schumer said, “whether that’s enshrining bias, or the loss of jobs, or even the kind of doomsday scenarios that were mentioned in the room. And only government can be there to put in guardrails.”

Other executives attending the meeting were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Musk said the meeting “might go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization.” First, though, lawmakers have to agree on whether to regulate, and how.

Congress has a lackluster track record when it comes to regulating new technology, and the industry has grown mostly unchecked by government in the past several decades. Many lawmakers point to the failure to pass any legislation surrounding social media, such as for stricter privacy standards.

Schumer, who has made AI one of his top issues as leader, said regulation of artificial intelligence will be “one of the most difficult issues we can ever take on,” and he listed some of the reasons why: It’s technically complicated, it keeps changing and it “has such a wide, broad effect across the whole world,” he said.

Sparked by the release of ChatGPT less than a year ago, businesses have been clamoring to apply new generative AI tools that can compose human-like passages of text, program computer code and create novel images, audio and video. The hype over such tools has accelerated worries over its potential societal harms and prompted calls for more transparency in how the data behind the new products is collected and used.

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who led the meeting with Schumer, said Congress needs to get ahead of fast-moving AI by making sure it continues to develop “on the positive side” while also taking care of potential issues surrounding data transparency and privacy.

“AI is not going away, and it can do some really good things or it can be a real challenge,” Rounds said.

The tech leaders and others outlined their views at the meeting, with each participant getting three minutes to speak on a topic of their choosing. Schumer and Rounds then led a group discussion.

During the discussion, according to attendees who spoke about it, Musk and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt raised existential risks posed by AI, and Zuckerberg brought up the question of closed vs. “open source” AI models. Gates talked about feeding the hungry. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna expressed opposition to proposals favored by other companies that would require licenses.

In terms of a potential new agency for regulation, “that is one of the biggest questions we have to answer and that we will continue to discuss,” Schumer said. Musk said afterward he thinks the creation of a regulatory agency is likely.

Outside the meeting, Google CEO Pichai declined to give details about specifics but generally endorsed the idea of Washington involvement.

“I think it’s important that government plays a role, both on the innovation side and building the right safeguards, and I thought it was a productive discussion,” he said.

Some senators were critical that the public was shut out of the meeting, arguing that the tech executives should testify in public.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he would not attend what he said was a “giant cocktail party for big tech.” Hawley has introduced legislation with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to require tech companies to seek licenses for high-risk AI systems.

“I don’t know why we would invite all the biggest monopolists in the world to come and give Congress tips on how to help them make more money and then close it to the public,” Hawley said.

While civil rights and labor groups were also represented at the meeting, some experts worried that Schumer’s event risked emphasizing the concerns of big firms over everyone else.

Sarah Myers West, managing director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute, estimated that the combined net worth of the room Wednesday was $550 billion and it was “hard to envision a room like that in any way meaningfully representing the interests of the broader public.” She did not attend.

In the United States, major tech companies have expressed support for AI regulations, though they don’t necessarily agree on what that means. Similarly, members of Congress agree that legislation is needed, but there is little consensus on what to do.

There is also division, with some members of Congress worrying more about overregulation of the industry while others are concerned more about the potential risks. Those differences often fall along party lines.

“I am involved in this process in large measure to ensure that we act, but we don’t act more boldly or over-broadly than the circumstances require,” Young said. “We should be skeptical of government, which is why I think it’s important that you got Republicans at the table.”

Some concrete proposals have already been introduced, including legislation by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., that would require disclaimers for AI-generated election ads with deceptive imagery and sounds. Schumer said they discussed “the need to do something fairly immediate” before next year’s presidential election.

Hawley and Blumenthal’s broader approach would create a government oversight authority with the power to audit certain AI systems for harms before granting a license.

Some of those invited to Capitol Hill, such as Musk, have voiced dire concerns evoking popular science fiction about the possibility of humanity losing control to advanced AI systems if the right safeguards are not in place. But the only academic invited to the forum, Deborah Raji, a University of California, Berkeley researcher who has studied algorithmic bias, said she tried to emphasize real-world harms already occurring.

“There was a lot of care to make sure the room was a balanced conversation, or as balanced as it could be” Raji said. What remains to be seen, she said, is which voices senators will listen to and what priorities they elevate as they work to pass new laws.

Some Republicans have been wary of following the path of the European Union, which signed off in June on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence. The EU’s AI Act will govern any product or service that uses an AI system and classify them according to four levels of risk, from minimal to unacceptable.

A group of European corporations has called on EU leaders to rethink the rules, arguing that it could make it harder for companies in the 27-nation bloc to compete with rivals overseas in the use of generative AI.